Second Thoughts

Revivable

Revivable Done Visit Belarus (204, 64, 23)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

HAHAHAHAAHAHAH...Um, No.

 

Dear Prokofy Neva,

I have previously perused your blog and would like to extend an invitation to write at Second Life's largest blog, Shopping Cart Disco. I believe this would be a great opportunity for you to expand your reader base and make a name for yourself in Second Life - as we both know a new generation of Second Life users has risen up. Previously relevant people have become irrelevant, unfortunately.

Thus, I am emailing you our requirements to apply to write at Shopping Cart Disco as a possible olive branch back into the eyes of the community. Deadline is September 12th, 2009.

Thanks!
Sincerely,
--Tenshi Vielle, Editor
http://www.shoppingcartdisco.com


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Please read this entire post before submitting any kind of application. If you can’t follow instructions, I can’t read your application… sorry!

We’re looking for someone with:

• A passion for Second Life. I’m not saying you have to give a Linden a blowjob here, folks. I’m just saying you have to enjoy yourself and people in SL, or at least be motivated about Second Life issues.
• A coherent writer. If you have trouble figuring out the difference between whose and who’s, please don’t email until you do know the difference between these and other english-language anomalies.
• On the same line, if people have previously compared your personality to a saltine cracker, please don’t apply. We like a little goof off with our news.
• Basic knowledge of wordpress and some very basic code.

If you would like to still apply for SCD, start by sending an e-mail with the below information to smiletenshi at gmail dot com.

• No attachments. I won’t open them. Last time someone sent me an SCD application, I got a Google Document with nothing that a normal email couldn’t have handled. NIX!
• Your full avatar name in the subject line – alts are cool, but please tell me your main just so I can make a more well-rounded decision.
• Your country of residence and native language. (All of our resident bloggers have their country of residence on the Staff page.)
• Contact information, including email address and skype/gmail addresses. I only use Skype for SL. That doesn’t mean I want to call you – Skype has a chat program too.
• Availability information — when and how often you think you’ll be able to post.
• An explanation of why you think you’re the right person for the job.
• Who you are and what you do in Second Life.
• Three sample posts of what you think would make a good SCD article. Length should be at the very absolute minimum two paragraphs – include link to an illustrative picture that YOU took, because I enjoy pictures at SCD. It keeps my ADD in check.
• Three links to SCD posts that you feel express the true nature of SCD.
• Three ideas for how you think you could improve SCD – or that SCD could be improved.

Lunatics at the Asylum

I'm going to have to continue to publicize and expose this type of threat and harassment here, as well as take appropriate action elsewhere, because it's really over the top.

Here's another lunatic threat posted to my blog (and winding up in the spam file as he is banned for inciting damages to me) -- from Mike Lorrey/Intlibber Brautigan/Intlibber BnT, in response to my statement that he was asking for my contact information:

"You deluded idiot, I asked for your attorney's contact information, not yours. I already know exactly where you live and have pictures of your building and the door of your apartment. Oddly enough your building looks like Harbl Hotel. How much is Bellevue Hospital billing your insurance provider to keep you put up in that place across the street, given Bellevue itself is overcrowded with NYC loonies?

Proper legal process is to request one's legal counsel's contact info so papers may be served to them and attorneys may talk with each other. Now, if you are not of sound mind and have a legal guardian, I need to know who they are as well if they arent your attorney."

Gosh, that old effective argument for Extropianism and trans"humanism" -- "I know where you live..."

I'm not required to give any attorney's name or contact information, or my own.

It wouldn't have occurred to me that because I decided to joke with the loon that was harassing me in the comments the other day that the loony faux-libertarian Intlibber would thereby conclude I am housed by a mental asylum lol. The other day, an anonymous griefer wrote he "knew where I lived" because it was in the vicinity of Bellevue Hospital. So I thought I might make a joke of it, and I said muahahahahah how do you know I'm not *in* Bellevue muahahahah. Er, I guess the humour was lost on him and Intlibber took it literally.

I'm not a patient at Bellevue and never have been; I'm not in any mental hospital and am not a psychiatric patient nor have I ever have been one. The only thing I've had to do with the RL Bellevue hospital is to take relatives there for reasons like car accidents, difficulties breathing, immunization shots, etc. Not that it would be anyone's business, of course.

The kind of person who would write to you that they "know where you live," that they have "pictures" of your door (like Joshua Nightshade did; like he claimed he was "saving me" from W-hat/b-tards who were doing this) that your house is ugly, that you are being maintained as a ward in a mental hospital program as an outpatient in the neighbourhood, etc. -- well, I don't think I need to spend *a lot* of time explaining why such a person is immoral, if not deranged.

I don't have insurance so there's no insurance provider doing anything for me; I pay rent on my normal house the normal way, by working lol.

I've found that Intlibber has threatened other people with lawsuits repeatedly, some of the most thuggish variety; they've laughed them off. It's too bad they didn't report them more often to the Lindens. Well, one can always laugh off someone telling you "they know where you live" and giving evidence, but I prefer simply to publicize it, as I think it's part of building that self-discrediting wall of shame around such actors in Second Life that is sorely lacking due to the lack of free media and a just justice system in said Second Life.

I still try to get to the bottom of the mystery of why Intlibber is so viciously targeting me, other than the basic ones of being a loser, etc. -- and I think it has to do with the fact that he has two over-arching mythic principles for his Second Life that have been taken a beating lately, and that unwittingly, I continue to puncture as false in my blog reports.

One is the idea that you can hydraulically change griefing by giving young people "outlets" of "creativity" or "work". He's tried doing that with his own operations in SL, and claims everywhere, in SLCC talks and such, that he has successfully "converted" and "changed" juvenile delinquents. Well, perhaps such programs have some modest percentage rate of success, I don't know that they've been peer-reviewed by outside independent examiners lol. I find that they aren't working on some of the characters who are obvious "beneficiaries" as well as apparently investors in BnT, like Tizzy Teardrop.

The other larger proposition is the Extropian brain-uploading fantasy. Apparently as this dialogue shows, Intblub thinks that all that stands between him and the Rapture of the Singularity is...Prokofy and Prokofy's "Ludditism". If only we could get rid of this awful Prokofy's awful exposes of the idiocy and fasicm of the Singularity ideology, why, we could overthrow the Lindens and they'd help the Singularity along. Hmmm. I'm not sure some Lindens need any overthrowing to actually believe the Singularity hoax, juding from how some of them have loved up the idea on their profiles, including our fearless leader with his fascination with "neural networks," but...I'm not sure that these, well, more productive members of society would turn to Intlibber, as productive as he claims himself to be (unlike those evil unproductive members of society!) for advice or collaboration. I could be wrong about that, however.

Denial of Service Attack

Denial of Service Attack Gosh, the radar shows who was on the sim before THIS happened. Guess who! Visit Ross (50, 71, 65)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

Governor Linden's Own

Governor Linden's Own Always safe on Governor Linden land! Visit Ross (59, 170, 51)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

Woodbury Student Hate

Woodbury Student Hate Hate as a tatoo on the neck of Woodburyite Visit Ross (229, 177, 56)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

Woodbbury Alts

Woodbbury Alts Iceman502 Scorfield and KLa Kawadias, "new citizen" and Woodbury recruit. Visit Ross (224, 176, 56)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

Woodbury University Griefing

Woodbury University Griefing Woodburies now repeatedly come to grief Ross infohub, stalking me around from parcel to parcel and then hiding on Linden roads or Governor Linden land nearby to regroup and bring new alts to grief again. Visit Ross (213, 177, 56)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

News Round-up on Woodbury Griefing Developments

As one never knows when a blog *might* be closed down, or one may simply get busy in RL, or "no man knows the hour," I'll just run a few short news briefs for now:

1. Certain developments I cannot speak of, but I will say that there are investigations under way. I don't expect much to come of them. Still, at least one of them is undertaken in good faith; the other doesn't seem so.

2. For some reason, which I can't for the life of me fathom, given everything, Intlibber Brautigan/Intlibber BnT/Mike Lorrey feels very empowered to harass me right now and seems keenly interested in showering me with threats of lawsuits, demands for my RL contact info so he can serve me lawsuits, claims that I engage in libel, etc. etc. which include circulating such a claim inworld, so he's been AR'd for that. I've attempted to refute his claims here. In the course of all this I've learned about some really thuggisn and nasty threats Intlibber has made to upstanding residents of Second Life which were really, really wrongful and which unfortunately, didn't get reported and addressed, so that he lived to threaten another person and another person after that. But, people like that don't scare me, I will continue to write by the light of my conscience and put out samizdat if I have to.

People like that may win in the end, but not forever. I've gotten a little more enlightenment by reading his transhumanist Extropian rantings in this chat here  Apparently, all that's standing between the Singularity and mind uploading and bliss is Prokofy Neva and his evil Ludditism and evil blog that....erm...criticizes the Lindens. So Intlibber's conspiratorial plot, after noticing that he has all these Extropian/transhumanist friends and Linden friends that don't overlap with his transhumanist buddies -- is as follows:

"we as transhumanists should be shaping the metaverse, and part of that is having influence inside the Lab"

However, Rodney Linden, a Libertarian and cyberpunk anime comic strip Neal Stephenson admirer isn't on Intlibber's friendship list, and doesn't seem to be the "influence inside the Lab" that Intlibber craves. However, Tizzy is working on it! By having Rodney come and explore Prok's donkey! Ah, the Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ Into the New World!

"I can support it no longer.
Laughing ruefully at myself
For all I claim to have suffered
I get up. Damned nightmarer!

It is New Hampshire out here,
It is nearly the dawn.
The song of the whippoorwill stops
And the dimension of depth seizes everything."

Galway Kinnell

3. Anonymous grieftards from the Emerald gang continue to harass me here and inworld, apparently they are outraged that I'd have the temerity to suggest that they are responsible for the hacking and abuse of their developed viewer, the horror. Now, where did I get that idea? Why, I got it from Discrete Dreamscape's *own remarks* here on this blog, which are reprinted again below, in which he discusses people who were "careless" with code and who branched off. Hey, it happens in opensource projects. That's why I don't like them. And not only do they happen, if you protest the results of that carelessness and thuggery you are savaged, as I've been savaged nastily by Discrete Dreamscape and all kinds of thugs and regulars from his groups.

These folks overlap with Woodbury and make common cause with them. They share similar groups, such as the Rodney Linden Fan Club. Yes, I guess I'm a bit of a community organizer as the various griefing groups come together in order to "get" me and join and coordinate their griefing in new groups. Gosh, the Lindens are making $100 off each one of these in sinks!

4. I've got it on very good authority that Rodney Linden did *not* do this chalking and wasn't there. Progress! However, Rodney was insolent, evasive, and acted guilty by ejecting me from his fan group when I asked these questions and put up a vote on this matter. So...perhaps he knows something, perhaps not. Meanwhile hordes of raving and roving cyberpunks are threatening to turn the entire grid and the entire Internet against me because I dissed Rodney's griefer get-up as inappropriate work attire. But if your work involves bug-triaging the opensource movement's most favourite features on the JIRA and operating the grid in between tour breaks with Woodbury griefers, then maybe it *is* appropriate to wear a neon-glowing robot outfit with a giant scythe ominously slicing the virtual air. We do know how innovative the Lab is!

5. A young contrite Woodburyite has written me who sounds  a bit more sincere than usual, but...never to be trusted. He says there was disagreement within the group about the op (there always is! lol). The reader may decide for himself. Loki Clifton may be out of group and out of pocket but his profile continues to sport the screenshot of the grief build in Ravenglass bothering me and my tenants so, meh. I liked Loki Clifton when I met him in RL, seemed like a fun kid, but, I don't like people who grief me and Loki has been griefing me.

6. Various people with unique names like, gosh, what was it, Werereplacingprokschickenwitha Python have been griefing me. The Lindens are doing their part by putting words in the new name list like "Python" and "Firehawk" and "Deanimator" and "Rockspider" (which we're told has awful slang connotations in Australia) in order to encourage chicken-killing. 

Yeehaw Ragu, that thug who terror-formed four sims when he got into the group as a resident because I didn't realize he was a fake renter at first some months ago, managed to show up and rent again, and he was not refunded. Let the $1150 kept from this thug (who smells like Shaun Altman to me) go towards offsetting the cost of all the chickens killed by Meif Ling and company.

Opensource the Governance of SL, Too

My post, in respones to Q Linden's curious post pimping the PJIRA. I think his bosses could have told him to do this, as when M Linden asked the audience at SLCC whether anyone was familiar with the bug triage sessions at Linden office hours for the JIRA, only one person in the audience - one person!!! -- Khamon Fate -- raised his hand. (Others are familiar with the JIRA itself, but didn't perhaps realize that if you want something actually done, you must get it on the triage agenda and show up inworld to lobby it).

 

Aug 29, 2009 6:49 PM Prokofy Neva  says:

Dear Q,

 I'm always puzzled when Lindens try to promote the PJIRA (as you are doing now with a kiosk in every single new infohub) when it is an unfriendly, abusive, and complicated place meant only for the most sophisicated coders and/or the most persistent and intelligent civilians bent on restraining coders.

 The built-in caveats that people are supposed to be civil and abide by the TOS are applied at best only selectively, and more often than not, applied so as to suppress legitimate, valid debate and expression and opposition to Linden policies and also narrow opensource culture boons like "mass free persmissions".

 The JIRA is overall a poor instrument for democratic debate in a free society as it cannot protect minority opinion, cannot help consensus-building, and cannot reflect democratic votes (it only has the fanboyz undemocratic method of "vote up or die"). Added to this undemocratic piece of software is the concept of the "triage" which makes even this very rudimentary democratic expression null and void, as "whoever shows up" at a triage -- having first pre-cooked the agenda with their favourite bug through the wikitarian agenda-input system which you failed to mention here -- will decide whether something gets worked on or not. So politically-incorrect bugs never see the light of day.

 Jessica has also pointed up a chronic political failure of the PJIRA, which is that whenever the gang who rules it doesn't like something, it is declared "expected behaviour" even if everyone else documenting it, sometimes going back years and years, knows it is a bug in violation of the framers' architecture. This is indeed what happened to my proposal of concern about the destruction of property on rentals when people accidently put items in Share, which turned out to enable returning of group-set prims, a concept that overrides the rule of law in group roles, which say that the owner of the group gets to specify who can and cannot return prims from the land. The sort of flags and recoding involved in eliminating the ability of "shared" items from being removed from land, and just enabling them to be moved or modified, was trivial. Yet it garnered fierce resistance because of a belief that without this collectivizing function, group builders could not enable anyone in their group to return unneeded prims. That SL is not just a sandbox for group builders, but far more used as a rentals and home and business platform for people who do *not* want just anyone to return -- and often destroy -- *private property* was lost on the coders.

 http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5491

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-121

 All of this makes for a rowdy, nihilistic, smug, and superior atmosphere where a tiny cadre of obsessive bug-finders and arcane feature nerds can push and push their agenda and brook no dissent from civilians, passers-by, or those persistent and intelligent enough to try to scope out what's happening and resist its worst extremes.

 God forbid that this JIRA ever, ever  come near real life, as it is an undemocratic and malicious horror. And yet, given Lindens working on e-democratic functions as individuals [like Rob Lanphier who wants to break the existing two-party electoral system and have a geek-run e-voting emporium, and given Linden connections to people in the White House, it could be a mouseclick away from appearing as a RL governance tool with its hacker cultures and functions baked into it, on something like whitehouse.gov (which is why I bother with it).

 Ciaran has touched on the worst problems briefly in his post, but in fact, WEB-382

(http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-382) --my proposal to stop the ability of other residents to close your proposals and bug findings was in fact passed (so as to protect dissent but also protect content made by individuals who continued to supply bug repros and justifications of their feature requests), a very long protracted battle. In theory, no resident is supposed to be able to close your proposal now. But the minute this idea was finally passed, it was undone -- by both Lindens and residents then taking it on themselves to abuse-report or ban those who disagreed with their closures, whether legitimate or arbitrary, and also by a new function called "resolved" -- which also stopped votes. Naturally, the purpose of anybody closing a PJIRA by any method is to stop the votes and stop it from gaining popularity.

 The one big suggestion I'd have for this PJIRA is that a group of good-willed citizens buy or rent the software from the JIRA people and duplicate the entire system outside the confines of Linden Lab and its chosen cadres in triage and PJIRA-closing, so that a kind of opensourcing of governance, too, could take place, much like OpenSim reverse-engineers and re-engineers SL itself. It might take 6 iterations of such software on different servers with different political constituencies, but at least this way, the battle between communism and capitalism and between opensource and proprietary code needs could be played out in peace on the merits without one side being able to shut up and ban the other.

 Failing such an opensourcing of governance, one could beg the Lindens to be more fair; to stop banning people for their perceptions of "editing wars"; to curb the most abusive and hateful people who keep arbitrarily closing bugs and proposals out of hate and ideological opposition; and to stop their throwing of the system always and everywhere to the extremes of the opensource movement. However, this would be a long-term prospect.