The grossly-titled racist griefing organization called the Patriotic Nigras unleashed a new onslaught against Second Life this weekend, using higher-powered weapons and disrupting the experiences of thousands of users on hundreds of sims with horrible self-replicating abortion objects on "physics" and able to "push" even in safe zones, spewing texture particles with pictures of abortions.
The Lindens mentioned nothing whatsoever about this, although FJ Linden discussed grid loads at length in a weekend blog.
The trademark-violating Second Life Herald also remained utterly silent about the attacks, although Pixeleen Mistral, who I'm 99 percent sure is Mark McCahill of Croquet, constantly celebrates the PNs by covering everything they do in loving detail, including their fake resignations and vows to reform, with eye-splitting, numbing detail. Just read the Herald for the last year, google the terms, and get an eyeful. As we know, Pixeleen even had a parental/mentoring relationship with one of the PN leaders after he allegedly stopped griefing, and even Pixeleen supposedly warned that all their shenanigans might really get them not just B&nd but bring round the RL G-men's paddy wagon. If "deadly codec" was *really* reforming, he wouldn't be publishing more fake stories about turning gay as a result of falling in love with Mr. Pix and then contracting lethal AIDS in RL from another gay liaison (gayness is a recurring PN theme) and supposedly facing death soon, he'd actually be reporting to the FBI on everything he knew about his former little friends. But it's all fake, of course.
I wonder if the Lindens have marketing types in charge now if they might FINALLY see their way clear to calling in the FBI for real now, and really trying to settle this problem of chronic PN griefing more forcefully.
One thing they might do is to stop letting people use anonymizers to log on, of the type Pixeleen seems to have used to access my blog about him ROFL.
Of course, the first thing people say if you suggest getting rid of the anonymizers -- something Philip did seem to seriously entertain anyway -- is that you will ruin the possibilities for accessing SL by people in countries with repressive regimes.
Usually when people talk about this, they don't mean China or Russia, which, of course -- duh -- have figured out how to block anonymizing sites -- duh -- they mean countries where the government isn't as socialist as they'd like, like America even under Obama or something.
People accessing the Internet out of their repressive countries, even if they use anonymizers, are still going to be pushing text and chat over their government-monitored lines, and if the government wants to really stop them, they will cut off their Internet connection, or certain websites, which is how governments serious about this, usually with Chinese engineering help, do it. They will hardly be foiled because they used an anonymizer to get on SL -- der. In fact, all they have to do is monitor those who constantly use anonymizers and also bug their cell phones or follow them to make short work of all that -- which is what police states do.
The tiny handful of brave blogging dissidents who use SL to fight for freedom *cough* might be inconvenieced in theory if they couldn't log on with anonymizers, but I'd have to see a lot more persuasive data on this before I'd be willing to say that we should hold up all progress on stopping griefing by not eliminating anonymizer log-ons.
The PN-Woodbury symbiotic connection could also be more periodically broken than the Lindens are currently breaking it. They let obvious Tizzers alts roam around like Tizzy Teardrop on the theory that each new alt is "innocent until proven guilty" although they banned the original Tizzers Foxchase for cause -- proof that it was he in fact harassing residents and crashing grids. If that main account and person running it is banned, why are his alts allowed on, even if he supposedly "keeps it clean" -- but just flies below the radar?
Spook Lexington, who came on to grief me severely and loudly proclaimed that he was Hazim Gazov (another Tizzers alt/husband), was finally removed from the People list -- but why did it take days and days?
This new attack this weekend hit not only sims like Ravenglass, they also hit Lusk and NCI and the Shelter, all places where there are large groups and also if I'm not mistaken general open groups that griefers can join to set prims. The answer isn't to close groups. The answer is for the Lindens to call the FBI.
The attacks today were particularly gross, as they involved not only the usual textures with a big picture of a fetus and placenta that had been aborted, but actual abortion "objects" -- big, bloody textured spinning objects with aortas sticking out of them -- that seemed to seek you, and then hit you over and over as they self-replicated, with a lot of force, enough to knock you half way across the sim, even on a sim where "push" was turned off. Odd, that.
Usually these spinning replicating things the PNs have bump you slightly, but they can't really push you with any force.
Now, you say, doesn't publicizing griefing like this just fuel them, letting them know they have a "hit," and spiking the malicious glee with which they will hit you again?
Um, no. In RL, when Al Qaeda attacks, you don't find NBC news falling silent under the theory that this will "fuel terrorism" if they just pretend it didn't happen.
And it's not like it's that big a deal. Mainland sim owners are well used to this sort of thing and simply deal with it. Even on the mainland you can minimize these attacks first with "hide particles" and then with autoreturn, and the Lindens are required only to deal with the problem of the things landing on Linden land set not to autoreturn (ahem) or no-show neighbours who keep serving as griefing safe areas because the Lindens refuse to do anything about such parcels even if the people who own them are missing for a year (ahem).
By the time you try to abuse report the owner/creator of the hideosity, they are long gone from the People list because the Lindens take care of them. It's pretty routine.
But there isn't any excuse for the Lindens to allow any of this whatsoever to last even 30 seconds, and just because griefers arm-race against anti-griefing techniques like overriding "no-push" doesn't mean you should throw up your hands and do nothing. They need to get serious about this sort of griefing because it isn't about kids home from school. These are adults, even if they have some kiddie followers. They consciously disrupt, with a very organized Leninist methodology and agenda, and they disrupt because they don't want online virtual worlds to become commercially successful.
In fact, now that we know Pixeleen is very likely to be Mark McCahill of Croquet, who is constantly editorializing in favour of the grief kiddies, and posting celebrations of Woodbury, which harbours the PNs, and constantly fanning up griefer apologists like Intlibber, there really should be grounds for at least an investigation. The Lindens should stop being chumps about this. The reason they go on being chumps is that they don't feel any pressure on this and don't connect up the dots even when they do feel a little pressure. The Herald constantly flouts the TOS with their name; they constantly encourage people who crash the SL grid by providing them space and encouragement in their publication. Why doesn't the Lab do something about this? No, I don't think the long Linden overreach should go to expression on third-party websites. But the trademark violation *is* within their legitimate reach. And crimes like DNS attacks and investigating their perpetrators is routine on every Internet site in the universe, without anyone screaming about free speech being denied to griefers and their supporters. Why is the Metaverse somehow exempt?
Yes, I am openly calling for the U.S. government to investigate an online publication covering a virtual world because there is grounds to suspect that they not only encourage and celebrate and publicize griefers, they know more about them than they let on, and even have met them in real life and could be helpful in prosecuting them.
If such a very, very remote possibility were ever to happen -- the hippie Lindens calling the USG and asking them to investigate their users and related third-party sites -- it's likely the Herald would say in high indignant dungeon that they only cover the news, but never make it (something we all know is fake). They're present themselves as horribly repressed victims, and get Terra Antiqua to cover their hideous repression -- and knowing Peter Ludlow, probably find RL media to pick up the same worn and tired meme. We would likely then hear many Twittering chastisements of the Lindens for oppressing free speech -- and the griefers would laugh all the way to the bank. It's likely the reason why the technolibertarian Lindens probably don't do anything about this. But they could start paying more attention to what happens on their servers, and what comes in and out of them, and do what is right.
Would such an investigation in fact be a chill on free speech? No. Because having free speech doesn't mean you get to kill it for other people by enabling virtual terrorists to crash simulators with abortion objects. Free speech is for everyone, not just the Herald. If the Herald has not incited crime or participated in crime, they'll have nothing to fear. Free speech doesn't entail deliberate incitement of violent action -- impairing the use of, crashing simulators of people who pay for them is vandalism -- it's crime. It's a crime like any other denial-of-service attack. Being a virtual world doesn't somehow make it exempt. Being a tabloid writing about a virtual world doesn't make you exempt, either.
The news that Pixeleen Mistral could be a leading industry rival deliberately sabotaging SL to harm it commercially should have prompted the Lindens to immediately freeze the account or at least put it on 24/7 surveillance -- which is what they did to me once for two weeks over a non-violent speech crime of criticizing their favourites on the forums. Yes, they should do a thorough review. They have grounds to act at least on the copyright infringement -- but perhaps they're afraid -- afraid they don't have the legal muscle to stand up in court to defend "SL" as something only they can claim.
Oh, you say. There isn't any proof that Pixeleen is Mark McCahill of the Lindens' rival Croquet? Oh, you say. There isn't any proof that even if he is, that he is in fact responsible for supporting the PNs just because he editorializes in their favour and lets them have plenty of their own space to write their own op-eds? Oh, you say, that if he celebrates the Woodburies, that there isn't any proof they harbour the PNs? Oh, you say, even if in fact Pixeleen *is* Mark McCahill and *does* provide airtime for griefers and victory-dance with them, that's acceptable speech under the First Amendment? Well, maybe. Yes -- that's what all of these people count on in their griefscapades -- Eddie Haskel-like plausible deniability and mind-so-open-your-brains-fall-out libertarianism.
Well, sez I. Let the FBI be the judge of that using their far more superior investigative tools than I or any other blogger has. It's important to study the connections to SL of all the rivals of Linden Lab -- or any disgruntled customers with beefs for any reason or no reason -- to see if they'd be capable of such industrial sabotage. Then we'll see : )
If Pixeleen is capable of hiding from his RL partner and lying about his RL gender in his sexual adventures on SL, if he is capable of hiding his RL identity all these years despite his enormous influence as editor of the highest-traffic SL-related blog, if he is capable of pretending he is just covering the Woodburies and the PNs when in fact he is gleefully making common cause with them -- for real -- then nothing Pixeleen says can be trusted. Nothing. So don't. If you continue to advertise on the Herald, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Explains why some of my tech-savvy SL friends, who are programmers, are pulling their hair out, don't know why things are so slow and are playing with all the preference settings in an effort to improve their experience.
Always gets me that the recommended way to optimize SL is to turn off its features.
Posted by: HatHead Rickenbacker | 01/25/2009 at 10:09 PM
psssst "dudgeon"
Posted by: Osprey Therian | 01/26/2009 at 01:13 AM
I believe "no-push" just disables the llPushObject() function that lets a script apply force (to an AV or an object) from a distance, not the more "physical" pushing that happens when an AV or a physical object actually bumps into an AV; that's why this kind of attack can still happen on "no push" land.
Posted by: Dale Innis | 01/27/2009 at 01:14 PM
For SL users' sake, I will just say that the only real way to speed up SL is to buy a faster processor and the EXACT variety of video card LL recommends. In my experience, SL has the bare minimum when it comes to video acceleration, so it will even run slower than games with graphics all the way up. These are client rendering issues, though, which have hardly a thing in common with network speed. Network lag causes you to suddenly bounce backward along your path or just fly of into infinite space. The time dilation 'slowdown' is the physics engine being bogged down. That is -not- the same as network lag, it's just causing the server to work harder on the physics so other things may be delayed. Sims only crash if the physics system is overloaded... which can range from minutes to mere seconds depending on scripting.
Posted by: MachineCode | 01/27/2009 at 04:47 PM
There was no grid attack this Sunday at all. There is no "griefer group" capable of doing any such thing in the first place, let alone the "PN" who don't even really exist any more. All that happened was that it was Sunday.
Posted by: Ordinal Malaprop | 01/27/2009 at 08:30 PM
Ordinal Malaprop,
The PN Are Very well Alive, and Have Been attacking SL Daily...
Where have you been?!?!?
Posted by: fjdbvgdfkg | 02/19/2009 at 01:56 PM
HAHA dude, I just found this thing. Where the fuck did I supposedly publish this crazy fake story you speak of? Firstly, I am not gay. Secondly, having AIDS does not make a person gay. Thirdly, independent news sources have published stories about me contracting AIDS. Who the fuck is going to lie about getting AIDS? Oh yes, because it's so flattering. Stupid twat.
I do however, suggest you correct your statements lest you find yourself before a judge for libel. I am a public figure and you have published misinformation about me.
I have not been a PN member since late 2007. I have not griefed in god knows how long. I have not even contributed anything anonymously to the PN since April of 2008. I am not involved in your pathetic Second Life, or SL as a whole, and I have not been for quite some time because I'm too fucking busy DYING, you stupid fat fucking cow.
Don't believe me? See here:
http://stash.norml.org/a-plea-for-medical-marijuana-in-augusta-georgia/
And see: http://www.metrospirit.com
Front page, in print and on the web.
I can prove every single thing I wrote here so go ahead and call my bluff. L-I-B-E-L. And you can try and claim I'm some leet hacker who bombed your e-land once or twice in court if you want to. I'm the dying AIDS patient with documentation from my doctors who writes for a newspaper. I have way more credibility than your batshit insane ass and you can't definitively tie me to ANY attacks.
I did develop the weapon they attacked you with though. It's old as fuck. I'm surprised this is the first time you've seen it.
Anyways, you know my real name. Everyone does - including the FBI, who by the way, still doesn't give a shit. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.
Posted by: deadlycodec | 03/20/2009 at 05:24 PM
On second thought, it's actually pretty funny now that I think of it. I take back what I said. You don't have to change or retract anything. All the crazy things that happen to you, eh? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Posted by: deadlycodec | 03/20/2009 at 05:36 PM
Er, I won't be changing anything I've written, as I've written what I know to the best of my knowledge, with available information, without malice. In no way does this affect anyone's livlihood, and deadlycodec is a public figure.
I also simply do not believe the story about deadlycodec allegedly being ill with AIDs or dying or being gay or not being gay but still dying of AIDs. Simply do not believe. I don't care what factoids are fetched up, I don't care what local newspapers, threats, corroborations, etc. etc. are fetched up. No sale. See you in court.
Bye.
P.S. I've proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that Pixeleen is Mark McCahill. So it really is sad, all of it.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 03/20/2009 at 08:11 PM
Um, I AM deadlycodec. My real name, Joshua Adam McCracken, is irrevocably tied to the name deadlycodec.
The Metro Spirit, NORML, and myself have all published material about my disease. NORML is a national organization that backed medical marijuana laws in all 13 states where it is now legal. The organization has been the driving force behind these initiatives as well as legislation that is currently being pushed in multiple states as we speak. It is a national organization. I do not, however, represent them. I am simply saying that there is corroboration. Local or not, any publication in print (such as the Metro Spirit) is going to have more credibility than you and your blog (which has only a small fraction of the readers fyi). The fact that you seem to think you know better is awe inspiring. See, people can't just put things that aren't true in print. It simply isn't done because that kind of thing would damage a publication's credibility. I provided documentation on letterhead from my doctors at University hospital in Augusta, GA at the RVD program and I physically showed my editor a bottle of Atripla with my name on it, along with bottles of pain meds with my name on them. Atripla is used EXCLUSIVELY to treat AIDS. It is an antiretroviral medication. I always submit corroborating evidence along with my stories to any publication for which I write.
The issue is that you're claiming that I am still currently engaged in unethical (and maybe technically illegal, but without legal precedent for prosecution) behavior while I am pretty much on my deathbed. You are doing so with no evidence whatsoever. That is the issue.
If you consulted your lawyer, and linked him to what I've written, then he'd tell you (like any sane person would) that I'm probably telling the truth and that this is libel. Why? Because I am telling the truth. Because it's too absurd to make up. Is it ironic that a former PN member contracted AIDS? Yes, absolutely. Some PN members might say I got it from Second Life, you know, since we always used to joke about SL having AIDS, as the meme goes. Haha!
I've given you all the corroboration I can without physically handing you proof. Let's face it, I doubt you'd want that so we won't go there.
Why are you so convinced that anyone who was a griefer in Second Life is evil to the core? Do you think every PN member is going to continue griefing until they're in their 60's or 70's, for those of us that live that long? The idea is absurd. Face it, I moved on. It's not like I harassed you all that much anyway, so why you're so deadset on this is beyond me. I am human and anyone who really knows me will tell you that I'm most certainly not evil to the core. Rebellious? Yes. Obnoxious at times? Absolutely. There is a person behind the persona though.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1101926654#/profile.php?id=1263164729&ref=profile
Look at the comments on my wall on facebook. How many people on there shaking their fist at me, telling the world how evil I am? None.
Posted by: deadlycodec | 03/20/2009 at 09:50 PM
Christ, you're all still arguing about this?
Posted by: Alyx Stoklitsky | 03/21/2009 at 02:33 PM