Inside the Bot Cave
by Pixeleen Mistral on 29/01/07 at 11:35 am
Bot-man Kamilion Schnook‘s underground testing facility
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
Inside a mountain on Anarchia Island, beneath a false floor is a cave that – at times – contains around 20 bots – zombie avatars controlled by a single person. Last night, a tip arrived on the mojo wire talking about “a secret cave filled with bots ready to attack”. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a little too good to be true – my dream story will have to wait for another day.
What I did find was an underground bot testing facility used by a scripter following the libSL open-source client developments – Kamilion Schnook. Mr. Schnook took some time to chat and demonstrated his botnet a bit – until they crashed and disappeared one by one after about 40 minutes.
The bots are a set of accounts being driven from a single client side program, and crashing bots are OK with Mr. Schnook – he says the point of making the bots is to “do smoketests on libsecondlife daily builds here, on linux/mono and windows/.net”. When the bots crash, Mr Schnook says, “the results are submitted back on to the libsl maintainers as well as stack traces of when they do eventually crash”. As we waited for the bots to crash we chatted a bit.
Pixeleen Mistral: so this lets you run a small army potentially? plus debug LibSL?
Kamilion Schnook: army? I suppose… they do have a mass follow command. but they never leave the island.
Pixeleen Mistral: cool! I know some people that would love that mass follow command
Kamilion Schnook: this is a private simulator. so we don’t have to worry about people complaining that we’re doing it on their land or public land or whatever. just so happens they tend to tip us over the top when we had the camping chairs out, which we removed earlier today. they also put much less stress on the simulator since they don’t have to display any textures or primitive data.
Kamilion Schnook: we’ve easily been able to handle 99 people in the sim with .80-.90 time dilations.
Kamilion Schnook: Since they’re all dressed alike and request far fewer agent updates than the normal client, a set of 20 of them is about equivalent to one normal SL client
Kamilion Schnook: TestClient itself isn’t automated but we have a shell script that checks if it’s running and restarts it when it crashes after copying the logs out to a holding directory
Botnets
Pixeleen Mistral: so are you just doing all this for the fun of it? or to make something?
Kamilion Schnook: You could say that — we’re helping out the community by locating problem bits in the code and fixing them. but I don’t get paid for it, and I’m not directly associated with the libsecondlife project
Pixeleen Mistral: how many of these bots are going to appear? how many do you make?
Kamilion Schnook: there’s a total of 23 on one net, and 14 on the other, for a total of 37.
Dominant 3D Browser?
Pixeleen Mistral: sounds like you are uber-committed to SL
Kamilion Schnook: Some folks have to be to make sure this ends up to be the dominant 3D Browser.
Pixeleen Mistral: well one of them will win I suppose
Pixeleen Mistral: probably whatever google gets behind
Kamilion Schnook: well, SL’s the only one I know of so far, other than opencroquet, that allows you to modify the entire world from end to end.
Kamilion Schnook: I asked phillip at the last townhall I saw him at about google buying out LL… his response was “no way”
Pixeleen Mistral: what about open croquet?
Kamilion Schnook: they have no economy — it’s just a fancy client without a world at the moment
Pixeleen Mistral: you kinda need a world
Camping Bot armies are over the top
Kamilion Schnook: we generally keep to ourself here in the sim, although I have noticed other people using bots on our camping chairs.
Kamilion Schnook: I have no real problem with our bots staying here and being used for testing, but sending out an army to camp seems a little over the top to me.
Pixeleen Mistral: yeah that is too much
Kamilion Schnook: But eventually these things are going to be able to speak and interact with people
Kamilion Schnook: one of my pet projects is a bartending script for them
Pixeleen Mistral: NPCs
Kamilion Schnook: I’m sick of seeing those fake flat people behind bars 
Kamilion Schnook: or even card dealers
Kamilion Schnook: there’s no end to the applications that this opens up — this and the SL viewer going open source.
Kamilion Schnook: and it’s an easy way to ‘save the grid’ by doing off-world processing instead of using the simulators to do it.
Kamilion Schnook: Eventually once the mono VM hits aditi and CIL bytecode is allowed. we’ll have some of the same tools in-world as we’ll have outside of it.
Kamilion Schnook: OpenCroquet can already speak the X windows protocol and display unix applications on a prim.
Kamilion Schnook: SL will eventually reach that level, even if it’s a flash UI on a webprim.
Use responsibly
Pixeleen Mistral: imagine the fun the war role play guys could have
Pixeleen Mistral: their own personal army to command
Kamilion Schnook: I’d rather not for the moment.
Kamilion Schnook: I don’t doubt that eventually, someone will write a bot script that will allow them to equip a weapon and hunt people down.
Pixeleen Mistral: yeah I expect that
Kamilion Schnook: combined with something like ownage, then some issues might begin to crop up.
Kamilion Schnook: but it’s the same as llRezObject, sure you can use it to grey goo, but you could also use it to rez all the dots in a pacman game
Kamilion Schnook: the code to do it is only one line difference
Pixeleen Mistral: in other words – use responsibly
Kamilion Schnook: exactly.
Kamilion Schnook: And we’ve seen overwhelming responsiblity on the user’s part…
Kamilion Schnook: we’ve got 3 million registered accounts, and likely less than 100 of those are the kind of people with not only the skill to write grey goo, but the motivation.
Kamilion Schnook: What that motivation is, I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.
Bot testing is OK with the Lindens
Kamilion Schnook: ‘couple lindens know about my botnet and are aware it’s not being used for greif, so for the most part, it’s fine with them.
Kamilion Schnook: they’ve been online and testing for nearly 3.5 months now
Pixeleen Mistral: well then the Lindens must be OK with it and if it is helping LibSL out it makes sense
Kamilion Schnook: As long as I’m not misbehaving with them, yes.
Kamilion Schnook: had I used them for Evil (TM), then the whole set of them and myself would likely be banned within hours.
Prokofy Neva
Jan 29th, 2007
I’m not aware that the “community” asked them to do this “testing of bots”. What is the “community”? A handful of Lindens and their pals in the IRC Channel? Seriously, how can *anybody* invoke a concept of “community” in SL except about themselves and their little friends?
Oh, the Lindens gave them a big nod and a wink, because they don’t mind exploiting young people’s labour; they aren’t willing to hire them as programmers so they let them hack around and feel superior. Great system.
I don’t know how you can come away from this kid’s sandbox, Pixeleen, and conclude that he is “uber-committed to SL”. Which SL? His and Cory’s? Whoever their little friends are that wish to gain exclusive use and benefit of this program? What say did we have in it? We pay BUNCHES to keep this boat floating — what input do we have?
Honestly, I ask a few pointed questions about the unethical actions of both libsecond (in griefing with bots and stealing from casinos and everything else) and Linden Lab itself (in offering first land but then having “shortages” that are induced by their need to sell $1695 and not $0 sims — and then permitting landbots to scarf up all the first land they do put out) and I’m bounced from the official blog and the town hall.
What kind of community is that, where you can airbrush out and silence everybody who scrutinizes your shady dealings and lack of ethics?
This little snot-snosed ass who goes around bragging and name- dropping how he “asked Philip” with whom he’s on a first-name basis” about his sale plan, and got what he ludicrously imagines to be a truthful answer, is not the person I or thousands of other landowners who pay for LL’s bottom line, wish to lead us or to actually tamper with the features that we buy when we subscribe and sign a TOS. I’m pretty certain of that. If he crashes his own sim now instead of griefing ours, that isn’t progress because he’s absolutely unaccountable to anyone. His arrogance and sense of superiority is appalling and you really have to worry about the coming eerie totalitarian Metaverse that will cloak itself in the guise of such neo-Bolsheviks in the cyber-clothing of cool geeks and tekkies.
What Mr. Non-Evil (TM) Schnook imagines is that if he — based only on his words to the Herald editor — is not personally at that moment using the bots to hunt people down, grief them, or copy their stuff, that everything is fine. That no one else will ever use his publicly-available invention. That nobody has to worry. Why, 3.5 million people and only 100 of them ever cause trouble! Why, that’s just such impressive monkey math!
This is fucking arrant NONSENSE. It only takes ONE to crash the entire grid, bring SL to its knees, and cause business losses for thousands of people amounting to serious RL money.
And as we’ve seen time again, every single thing that is advertised as progress and Beneficial to the Community is in fact lining the pockets of only a few. We have yet to see A SINGLE, BENEFICIAL PUBLIC WORKS FROM LIBSECONDLIFE. NOT A SINGLE ONE. Don’t tell me finding a bug is a benefit; that happens without a dedicated group encouraging griefing and laughing at everybody anyway.
Right now, I’d like to hear a lot more about libsecondlife’s overriding of the ban/eject system on estates and mainland. Comments, Mr. Not-Evil (TM) Schnook?
We’re still trying to piece this together and document it better. What I personally have witnessed now dozens of times is evidently either a) ability to use a new, open-sourced client viewer that can avoid ban/eject for its user, or b) some kind of scripted override of parcel/estate bans. Since I’ve seen this function of not being able to ban W-Hat, v-5, and related griefers for more than a year now, I have to figure that either they hacked the client a year ago and the Lindens looked through their fingers at it, or they had the script or program ready, or both.
There are now griefers inworld who come and bombard you, push you, scatter ugly prims on you, and try as you might, clicking and clicking on them, you can’t get them to eject. You get a message, ‘YOU ARE NOT THE OWNER OF THIS ESTATE’ when you do that, even if you are! it is terribly annoying and makes people hugely angry especially if they are tenants granted ban rights that don’t seem to work, using the new group tools.
On islands, people are stumped when they try to mass ban somebody from an estate, and they can’t for certain people who show up seemingly immune.
That’s all we have gotten so far from libsecondlife, reverse engineering, and open-sourcing the client. When you have something better, call me.
Derek
Jan 29th, 2007
Prokofy: The time has come for you to seek psychiatric help for your massive electron-incuced psychosis.
Derek
Jan 29th, 2007
induced
otakup0pe Neumann
Jan 29th, 2007
That’s all we have gotten so far from libsecondlife, reverse engineering, and open-sourcing the client. When you have something better, call me.
We’ll let you know when the future is here.
Baba
Jan 29th, 2007
You’re finally irrelevant Prokofy. Congratulations for being totally batshit insane.
You used to make refutable points, but now you have nothing but senseless spew.
Cat Scratch
Jan 29th, 2007
Pixeleen,
As an editor can you teach your weak link blogger Prok how to research stuff like this? Kudos for going to a source rather then rattling off like some kind of doomsday freak on a street corner holding a “The end is near” sign.
Really, this was well researched.
Eddy Stryker
Jan 29th, 2007
Kamillion, I applaud the responsibility of running all of these bots on a private simulator that you are paying for yourself. It’s pretty difficult to make an argument of wrong-doing when you are coming out of pocket for the server resources they use (however minimal).
Clarrice Cinquetti
Jan 29th, 2007
Hmm wonder where he is on the Popular List with all his *testing* alts?
what a crock, helping the community…
I am sure the guy I hope knows that the bots already can have profiles, have groups, change avatar default forms. They can go to a specific sim, sit in a camp chair..in other words what the hell is he testing?
Another good reason the Popular list should be removed. Hell the guy on Sine Island with the dancing bots said he was going to start selling the program. Won’t be long everyone can fill their sim or Island to look popular. And they thought camp areas were a scam…hahahaha
Prokofy Neva
Jan 29th, 2007
>but now you have nothing but senseless spew.
Could you provide a pointer to something useful than exploits and bots that we can all recognize as useful that has come out of libsecondlife? Oh, and P.S., that pointer to the name of the author and deployer of CopyBot from you “information wants to be free” open-sourcerers would be good to know, too, ktx. Yes? Hello? Baba? Hello. Baba? Come in please. Baba? Pointers?
>As an editor can you teach your weak link blogger Prok how to research stuff like this?
I dunno, the other day, on my alt, I invited otakup0pe Neumann to speak for the Society for Virtual Architecture. He talked and talked. I have the transcript which I’ll put out at the SVA soon. I thought it would be interesting for others to come and hear, and they all found it fairly interesting, I guess, although mainly other coders or tekkiewikinistas came, rather than actual architects, who probably either don’t need, or don’t see an immediately use for, stuff this raw. I didn’t hear anything that is useful *today* from libsl, only lots of speculative ideas. Of course, I’m not an expert.
However, I do point out that I’m perfectly capable, of going to these kids and interviewing them and hearing what they have to say. I went and sat at the townhall after-chat with Philip Linden and listened to Kamillion talk for ages
transcript: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/01/open_sourceclos_1.html‘
Yes, Pixeleen is a great journalist, she can make very dry, subtle comments and they sail RIGHT over the heads of the schnooks she is interviewing, it’s fun to watch : )
BTW, I think Elanthius would say the same exact thing that he said on libsecondlife’s website or SC or inworld in an interview. It’s not like rocket science.
As for Good Citizen No-Evil (TM) Schnook keeping his bots on his base, um, what happens when Good Citizen No-Evil (TM) Schnook posts his bot-thingers on the SVN or the open-source library or whatever it is called, and others, less scrupulous, with the low ethics for which programmers are known, grab it? Hmm? Oh, he’s not going to publicize his reverse-engineering work on this open-source client? Oh. Ok. Well, but I thought…oh nm….
“Are you in the Future, Pixeleen?” lol
セカンドライフウォッチ 【SecondLifeWatch】
Jan 29th, 2007
BOTのアジト つづき
ＢＯＴのオーナーのインタビューを興味深く拝見。 最初は、ＢＯＴを操る凶悪ハッカー…
Panda
Jan 29th, 2007
“This is fucking arrant NONSENSE.”
You just described your first post, Prokofy.
Why are you so afraid of people who can do things you can’t?
Prokofy Neva
Jan 29th, 2007
>Why are you so afraid of people who can do things you can’t?
I’m not afraid of anything. Why are you so afraid of putting your SL name on a post? Hello?
Flack Quartermass
Jan 29th, 2007
Thanks for the interview. It’s nice to get some transparency on the otherwise unknown testing taking place with alternative clients.
I like the idea of botenders [sic] and other potential non-harmful uses these people are providing. Particularly if they are seeking server efficiency in the process.
Eddy Stryker
Jan 29th, 2007
“As for Good Citizen No-Evil (TM) Schnook keeping his bots on his base, um, what happens when Good Citizen No-Evil (TM) Schnook posts his bot-thingers on the SVN or the open-source library or whatever it is called, and others, less scrupulous, with the low ethics for which programmers are known, grab it? Hmm?”
I wouldn’t worry about it too much, people are still too busy playing with the open source client released by Good Citizens No-Evil (TM) Linden Labs. As you said yourself, libsecondlife is irrelevant now!
Prokofy Neva
Jan 29th, 2007
Oh? So it’s Linden Lab that is creating and running the bots, then Eddy?
I’m still trying to understand why you’d take up a scarce space on a sim holding only 40 or 100 during a party, concert, club, event, with a dumb “bot-tender” in a world where people don’t even really drink.
Maxwell
Jan 29th, 2007
@Panda: Prokofy is afraid of anyone that can code even a simple 1 to 10 counter in the old Visual Basic language sets simply because Prokofy cannot understand it and does not think it is worth the time to learn and understand.
@Prokofy: People do not post using a Second Life name for many reasons. One is that they do not have one, and that having said name is not a prerequisite to post anywhere (not even on your own blog. Guess who? “doesn’t matter.”). another reason is that some may have read the works of several second Life Residents and come to the conclusion – and this is assuming they have a Second Life name – that posting using said name would allow anyone that has an issue with their viewpoint the ability to eventually track them down based on the groups they are in, ban them from all of their land, start a smear campaign to get them banned from other places, and/or finally find some way to get their account terminated.
In the light of both of those instances – which I am certain are both true, after all the second happens (though without the land bit) on other services, in forums …. everywhere on the internet – the people who do not use a Second Life name are the intelligent ones.
In addition to all of this, dismissing someone based on such a poor qualifier as having or not having a Second Life name only shows that you lack the ability to take criticism. You want to be able to ‘fight back’ in Second Life as well as on the Internet. They want to keep it out of their Second Life (if they have one), so who are you to tell them how to post?
Oh that’s right – nobody. “Prokofy Neva does not exist in the real world – whomever you are behind that screen and keyboard does. I’m done addressing a make believe person.
Cat Scratch
Jan 29th, 2007
>>I’m not afraid of anything. Why are you so afraid of putting your SL name on a post? Hello?
Oh, is this your silly blog where the rules require this? I like how when someone calls you on your hypocrisy or has a different opinion from you your response is about a SL name. Could you be more pathetic?
Cat Scratch
Jan 29th, 2007
>>I’m still trying to understand why you’d take up a scarce space on a sim holding only 40 or 100 during a party, concert, club, event, with a dumb “bot-tender” in a world where people don’t even really drink.
The same reason you have a lame seafood place in a world where people don’t really eat?
Prokofy Neva
Jan 29th, 2007
But *everybody* eats at Prok’s Seafood! : )
Furthermore, there’s nothing I’ve been “hypocritical” about, so having exhausted that non-issue with your non-argumentation, I turn pointedly to your absence of responsibility.
Maxwell
Jan 29th, 2007
@Prokofy: You have no responsibility. You are posting with a fictitious name, belonging to a fictitious person who exists only within a server and as computer bytes.
You have no ground to stand on.
Kamilion Schnook
Jan 29th, 2007
I saw your comments on your blog, prok, and I assure you, I am completely aware of the commutations of my name.
Why do you persist in believing that I am a person of below average intelligence? Sometimes I lack in common sense, like responding to someone trolling me. And Kamilion is a internet handle I’ve been going by since the 80s. It actually stems from a 1983 episode of Doctor Who. I was actually born today, on that year. It has nothing to do with the reptile chameleon. Of which I am also aware, but I choose to keep iguanas instead. ^_^
I don’t really see why you’re so so up in arms about what I do in my private space on the island. We pay the bill for our server space in Second Life, just as I pay for the server space sllabs.com is hosted on. What, exactly, is the difference between the two? I am simply a CPU, or in the case of sllabs.com, a virtual CPU, running somewhere on a linux server. The glue that binds the two is no different, or even superior — they are different facets of the same data structures. I try my utmost to code in safeguards against sim lag with my vendor system, using llMinEventDelay. Sure, it creates a tiny lag in the one person using it, but it also means it can be skipped over for other scripts to run, yielding early.
No one asked me to test the bots, it’s just an interest I have, considering I’m learning C# in my spare time.
Conversely, little of the data has actually made it back to libsecondlife yet, it’s just been gathering in folders, except for a certain particularly nasty crash when specific things were done to the bot. The code is to do this is stored in a public SVN revision control repository st libsecondlife.org, and I have only submitted a single line and variable patch somewhere in December to have the uptime command list their names as they returned their status message. I’m mearly a beginner programmer, I’ve only been at this a year. I’ve used linux for a number of year now, and tend to rely on it’s stability as a server. I repeat, I did NOT write the code to do this. It’s free as in speech, and also free as in beer. Personally, I think the single line of code I have submitted is graffiti on fine, fine work.
You want a public benefit of libsecondlife? Okay, sure, it may be a bug, but it’s fixed now.
Once upon a time, it was possible, with a little packet play, to trick the server into paying you however much you asked it to. Including from NULL_KEY, the standard key used in scripting to denote no-value. It was possible to forge any amount, from anyone, and I witnessed someone amongst the libsecondlife maintainers who noticed this and quietly reported it to Linden Labs. I’d say that’s a pretty big savior of the economy to have a bug that size quietly boarded up.
Second Life is going to end up being accessed and accessing everything else in a number of ways…
I am not in the know here, so most of this is speculation, but based on the path that has been set out.
You are going to see more and more clients that can speak secondlife protocol, as linden labs is working to open that protocol further and with more standards compliant technologies, and it already has begun integration of the best free, open source browser/rendering engine that I’ve had the pleasure of watching mature from beta 0.7 to 2.0′s release.
Don’t you understand how SL can’t help but change how the web is accessed? Eventually, myself and the rest of the team that I am part of will be able to literally share a 2D browser on a prim, and all discuss and collaborate on it. The web won’t go away, because it’s absolutely killer for text and simple graphics. Second Life is going to supplant things like firefox and internet explorer more than the web itself, because that is simply the way the vast majority of the people will accept and enjoy when it arrives.
Second Life is already a part of the internet, and it will grow and evolve with the internet, just as the world wide web revolutionized the internet, just as IRC revolutionized the internet in 1991 when we had realtime communication from russia, just as SLIP, and PPP, and the myriads of past protocols that have came and gone in the history of the internet.
Hopefully, someday, Linden Labs might give us a way to run external programs (bots) against the grid directly, and recognize them immediately, perhaps like opening a special last name that doesn’t die after 150 residents use it?
I know Bot is already a last name, perhaps we should have some more along those lines of names? Or setting them apart with all CAPITALS last names.
Eventually, this is going to be the catalyst to literal ‘agents’ that we can send on tasks to do things for us, like gathering headlines for my island’s billboard, go and purchase a specific item for sale, or even build a precision structure using the present iterations of machine intelligence. I, for one, would love to see someone hook up a neural network simulation to the Second Life protocol and actually begin to teach it inside the world to interact with others.
I would be very curious to see what it might build….
Nacon
Jan 30th, 2007
Prok… take a pill and roll over.
BTW!…. you still haven’t explained your action or your “responsibility” to make public statement about accusing ESC using copybot and creating bunch of mindless clones was false on SL Herald report. What happened to it? You left the job to press further details about ESC… and somehow you did nothing and got your job back?
You sir… or ma`am, whatever the fuck you want to be… are a coward.
(keep in mind…. everyone is calling you crazy/insane/hypocritical/crock… but I’m calling you a coward, a disgrace to the people of SL… and nothing more than that. You may pick a fight with me blindly or wake up and take your responsibility action.)
Prokofy Neva
Jan 30th, 2007
Schnook, your concept that what you’re doing in SL is just “WTF I get to do on my land” is touching — and I can say “nice try” — but seriously, you need to get a handle on the fact that you are in a WORLD with OTHER PEOPLE not all of them your little friends in your little group, and your little Linden buds. Honestly, the blindness and inconsiderate egotism of you folks is boggling.
This idea that you can yammer endlessly on in tekkie jargon about your little coding sprees and never lift your head up to see how badly libsecondlife has affected other people is just stunning. You think if you just beaver away in your little cell, that you have no relationship to anything else. But you are in a group project, a group project those stuff is being used to exploit, harm, steal, and disrupt the second lives of others.
It just fucking boggles the mind, your failure to grasp that you are with other people affecting them. You think it is some abstraction, just some programming and numbers and your showing off and being hot shit and impressing Lindens and polishing your resume. It’s sick. It’s just freaking *eerie* to see. Well, history tells us that people who behave in this fashion eventually get their asses handed to them.
This concept that “the Internet” endless open vistas for you and your friends to code and get stuff for free, or that it is what everyone wishes in a 3-D virtual space is the heighth of your arrogance and egotism. It lets me know that while technically able to *make* this 3-D world, under no circumstances should you be allowed to *run it*. The sooner we can all reach the point where you people are put in the place of gas station attendants and car repairmen, the better for our society. I am not kidding.
Nacon, read my copious comments on the thread about ESC and on my blog, no need to repeat them all here. I’ve answered everything in full, and to this day, all the questions I answered remain unanswered. So…Nacon is an SL last name, what’s the first name? Speaking of responsibility.
Maxwell
Jan 30th, 2007
@Prokofy: A few facts for you:
1.) Without coders, Second Life, the Internet, your computer … In fact everything that relies on even the simplest code to run would not exist.
2.) Second Life is a program, the Sims are server hardware, the ‘land’ is a bunch of code. This is not a world, in fact it is no more a world than any of the places featured in some of my old Super Nintendo games.
3.) Your inability to answer a direct question without sending people over to read your Blog is suspect. It shows an inability to give a direct answer.
4.) You are not the final say as to what is and is not allowable, Linden Lab is.
5.) A person using a fictitious name, belonging to a fictitious character in a program has no right or ground to stand on if they attempt to speak of responsibility.
Now, to end this little response of mine I’d like to point out that the name I am using to post with is my real first name, anyone with time and patience could find me with just that information, true but it still means I am responsible enough to remain in reality.
You however cannot claim the same thing as you firmly believe (and yes I try to keep up on current events) that some imagined group is out to get you. You will never post with real responsibility or accountability because of this belief.
Kamilion Schnook
Jan 30th, 2007
Yes prok, it is touching, the fact that you think what I’m doing actually matters in the least. This is what we call a SERVICE ECONOMY. You pay for a service, you get to use the service, within the bounds of the service. I happen to cohabit with someone who has paid his initial startup fee of $1200, and pays his monthly bill of $195. That is outlined as server resources, and the fact that we can make it private, as we’ve now been forced to do, is exactly the same as an IRC channel.
On IRC, there is a Server, a Network Connection, and a set of Channels, or if you want to use SL speak, simulators.
Each of these contains a set of people, and bots, that make up a community that is a segment of the whole.
On IRC, when you’re in a channel, you can have Status. Operators have an @ — they can kick, ban, and set global channel modes, like +s for secret, +p for private, +i for invite only… You can be ‘kicked’ from a channel, like you can be ejected from someone’s parcel of land. You can be banned from a channel like you can be banned in SL.
There are also +v or Voice’d users. These people can speak even when +m (channel moderation) is in effect. Basically the same as being in a group in SL. Then you have the normal channel-goers. These people have no indicator, and can only join, and leave the channel, and if +m is not set, converse.
Second Life is seemingly very closely modeled after this proven concept, considering EFnet has countless users, and there are upwards of 60,000 online concurrently. And that’s just one IRC network. There’s hundreds of these, some massive like EFnet, some tiny like Nintendorks or AxeNET.
I stay in my own little channel, and I don’t takeover other channels in SL.
Unlike IRC, where a channel is free and can be owned by anyone who can hold ops in it, instead we pay for our virtual space, and we are in control of who can, and cannot visit it. If you don’t like this, then tough. You are still welcome in my personal space, but it is my personal space, none the less. What I do in my personal space, until Second Life allows 3rd party serverspace to interact with the grid, is not really your business. If you would perhaps, like to purchase our island and take over the bill, then you may have control over what is done or not done there. Until then, The owner and myself reserve the right to remove anyone causing a problem. And that’s what WE see as a problem, not you.
Yes, we’ve been in the popular places list. In fact, we’ve been running a large number of camping chairs on our land just to hand out a bit of L$ to the million new users to SL who didn’t get any when they signed up. And likely, other people as well. And probably some bots. One thing I know — Elements isn’t gonna get off #1 anytime soon. And we’ve made #2 before for a day or two before dropping back down on the list. Y’know what we got from being on popular? Newbies at all hours, speaking all languages, some causing trouble, some trying to calm it down. People screaming, and shouting, and lagging the sim while we’re working. Normally, we can’t b*tch about this, as frankly, we enjoy the company most of the time!
And can you name one instance of libsecondlife causing damage that wasnt’t mainly due to people like you spreading misinformation and lies about what libsecondlife can do? And none of this mythical ‘so and so came to my land and greifed me’ or ‘they yelled bad words at me’ crap. Have you even remotely considered people are greifing you because they don’t like you, not because they’re part of a group? I will be frank and honest with you, I don’t particularly care for you, and were I the type of person who would hold a grudge, I might also consider dropping by and screaming jibberish at you until you banned me. I believe the following pretty much sums it up: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
Y’know what, I’m a poor kid. I live in a sh*tty little trailer with holes in the floor and a leaky roof.
I never went to high school, or middle school, because I didn’t have any kind of proof of birth at the time. It wasn’t mandatory until 1986.
I’ve probably made less than $5000 in my entire life, most of that from working with my hands as a landscaper, and fixing houses. Doesn’t take much schooling to learn how to work with lumber.
So if I ‘get my ass handed to me’ as you say, then not much harm can come of it. I hope you have a pleasant night. ^_^
Howie Lament
Jan 30th, 2007
Prokofy, have you tried playing World Of Warcraft? I’m sure they’d welcome you with open arms over there.
Then maybe we could get some peace and quiet while we help build SL, instead of having to deal with all this dramamongering.
hotlips Tornado
Jan 30th, 2007
“This little snot-snosed ass”
Actually, reading this thread, Kamilion comes across as a pretty nice guy, and you come across as a bully.
Hearts *and* minds Prok
Prokofy Neva
Jan 30th, 2007
I don’t need little smug lectures on the glories of coding in the Internet. I do want to point out that along the way to coding, oh, Google and Mozilla, those people didn’t invade my home, crash my computer, destroy my business, or stalk me in RL — all elements of the menacing culture of Second Life. Big difference.
As it happens, I’m not a person using a fictitious name as assholes long ago outed my connection to my real-life name, and I don’t hide it. As for sending people to my blog, I simply don’t see the need to reiterate long argumentations and counter-arguments that were already laid out here and on my blog about the CopyBot and ESC affair. On day one, I corrected the record regarding the false statement I had made, based on a corrupted source’s manipulations who was paid to lie about other things, about ESC having an apparels client. They didn’t. But Eddy Stryker had a rock band client and had his own reasons for making CopyBot and things like it. FlipperPA Peregrine never adequately explained how he could find out about CopyBot, claim to be able to stop it by reasoning with libsl people, but then not actually stop it or alert the Lindens. We’ve never had John Hurliman confess openly to being the maker and deployer and benefitter of Copybot (he sold it). Etc. These points are all amply laid out and argued and demonstrated on my many-part series about “Liberated Second Life” on my blog — go there.
will be frank and honest with you, I don’t particularly care for you, and were I the type of person who would hold a grudge, I might also consider dropping by and screaming jibberish at you until you banned me.
This is what I mean by low ethics or absence of ethics for which coders are known. They think it’s ok to grief someone who criticizes them on forums, shouting at them in world and disrupting events, and putting penises all over their land. Nice club you’re in.
But I’m not talking about petty griefing. I’m talking about your little friends crashing the entire grid. We all know that they did that, and we all know that the Lindens adopted a curiously ambiguous attitude toward this problem because at the end of the day, the programmers dealing with it treated it like a red and blue team combat game, not the problem of how to maintain a civilized world for other, non-sandboxing customers.
No one has ever been able to adequately explain why reverse engineers have to destroy the world in order to save it. On the Internet, engineers add to and enhance the world of the Internet. On Second Life, reverse engineers substract and destroy the fragile world. That’s the difference.
The problems with CopyBot and CampBot and LandBot are all real. They aren’t based on “lies” and “spreading rumours”. We all know that CopyBot didn’t copy much; didn’t sell that many copies; didn’t work so hot; got broken in the next patch blah blah blah. But it did cost business loss in many ways, some with knock-on effects, and it continues to be a profound menace and problem for the Metaverse, as Desmond has also come to see and wrote about on my blog today regarding the open-sourcing being a menace for content-creators, not only land-owners.
Mark my words:
Ultimately, there is no resolving the class warfare between sandboxers (programmers, hackers, libbers, Lindens) and settlers (landowners, developers, tenants, content creators). They will rage and wage war until one prevails. The weak links in each class — the content creators who are the pro sandboxers and the Lindens who are the pro settlers — will make the wars wage on even longer by their treachery. Ultimately, unless the settlers prevail, the sandbox race will come to an end. That is why perhaps in a generation, we might count on some rational restraint of the destructiveness of sandoxers in their own class self-interest.
People who try to invoke their “poor kid” status on Internet forums only elicit loathing from me. It’s the lamest game in town, playing a card from RL. We can all play poor and play RL hardship cards. It sounds like your education is indeed insufficient, and finishing it up on the Internet has made you the um delightful thug that you are.
I don’t care how such thugs come across to their cronies as more positive; I’m not in any beauty contest. I challenge the thugs and the monsters the Lindens have created.
Baba
Jan 30th, 2007
Prokofy,
You don’t have the understanding of the issue to offer anything interesting to the debate. You show this by your dismissal of so many important issues with your flippant remarks and “you’re no better than thugs/monsters/Bolsheviks/griefers” comments.
If you were capable of supporting your arguments any other way you wouldn’t need to use charged language to sway people. As if by sheer force of will and an overwhelming supply of words you can cover up the truth and supplant it with your own.
You accuse the people you call “tekkies” of not caring about anyone elses point of view, but it has always seemed to me that you are the one dismissing your opposition out of hand.
I think more of the “tekkies” would respond to your arguments if you could deliver them without accusations and insults on every other line. Instead, replace them with an argument that can stand on its own.
I’ve given you my opinion on matters of open source and protocols before. Others have also shared well reasoned opinions with you. Why not do them the courtesy of responding in kind.
Panda
Jan 30th, 2007
“I do want to point out that along the way to coding, oh, Google and Mozilla, those people didn’t invade my home, crash my computer, destroy my business, or stalk me in RL”
I think you’re missing the BIG FACT HERE that coders are people too. People! Different motives, backgrounds, skills, lives.. just like the other 6+ billion people on this planet.
Your lumping everyone in with your silly notion of “tekkie wikis” is silly, and stereotyping thousands wastly of individuals. There’s a word for that.. but I’m sure it’s not in the neo-commie dictionary used by aging obsolete tekkiephobes like you Prok. You WISH you could put everyone down to your level, washing windows, cleaning trash. Your blessed utopia where you are again relevant and no skill is required beyond being able to write 5000 word essays to fool people into thinking you have any value any more whatsoever.
But what does it matter? We’re all the same anyway, aren’t we?
Overcast
Jan 30th, 2007
Hmm, maybe I’m waaaay off here.
But, if he’s paying for the extra 19 accounts for all the bots – no biggy I guess.
If he’s got them all ‘free’ – wouldn’t he be violating terms of service, I mean – you only get one account free, right?
/shrug – What do I know, I’m just a newb~
Maxwell
Jan 30th, 2007
@Prokofy: The name “Prokofy Neva” does not exist in any directory outside of Second Life, therefore you are hiding behind a fictitious name, Kindly drop the semantics.
A post to a blog is not a direct answer to any question, nor are your short story length posts. There is no debate in a direct answer. There is however an answer in the fact that you seem to think otherwise: You prefer to hide.
Now on the the big one:
“I don’t need little smug lectures on the glories of coding in the Internet. I do want to point out that along the way to coding, oh, Google and Mozilla, those people didn’t invade my home, crash my computer, destroy my business, or stalk me in RL — all elements of the menacing culture of Second Life. Big difference.”
You have no tangible evidence to support the statement that any form of “stalking” took place anywhere, let alone that it is part of second Life’s “Culture”. All you have is a phone call, made to your home by a single individual who got his information quite legally. as far as I am aware, a Second Life client crash does not result in a computer crash – not unless your machine is old enough that the shock locks it up – and thus far no one has set foot in your home.
It is at this point that I would like to say this Prokofy: You’ve told me all I need to know. You are incapable of stepping away from the persona you have created for yourself, incapable of seeing reality as it truly is.
I’ll be praying for you.
Overcast
Jan 30th, 2007
Hmm, maybe I’m waaaay off here.
But, if he’s paying for the extra 19 accounts for all the bots – no biggy I guess.
If he’s got them all ‘free’ – wouldn’t he be violating terms of service, I mean – you only get one account free, right?
/shrug – What do I know, I’m just a newb~
Overcast
Jan 30th, 2007
Hmm, maybe I’m waaaay off here.
But, if he’s paying for the extra 19 accounts for all the bots – no biggy I guess.
If he’s got them all ‘free’ – wouldn’t he be violating terms of service, I mean – you only get one account free, right?
/shrug – What do I know, I’m just a newb~
Cocoanut Koala
Jan 30th, 2007
The question of whether they get them for free is a good one.
I tend to feel they do not pay $10 for each extra bot they create.
I also wonder – and would LOVE to know – how much of the increased population is actually bots.
I imagine it is a very small, minute proportion – but then, I could be surprised. And the Lindens love each and every avatar they can add to their population numbers, whether they represent actual people or not.
I wonder, too, how much of the difficulties on the grid can be attributed to the bots.
We have corporations “establishing a presence” in SL now – that is, putting a marker there in case they ever want to use it. The development companies like Electric Sheep Company take their money for the project, and then skeedadle.
We have bots buying land, and bots sitting in camping chairs.
I think it is practically poetic justice that Linden Lab – who value 0′s and 1′s above actual humans – might find themselves without actual humans one day.
coco
Nacon
Jan 30th, 2007
Prok “Nacon, read my copious comments on the thread about ESC and on my blog, no need to repeat them all here. I’ve answered everything in full, and to this day, all the questions I answered remain unanswered. So…Nacon is an SL last name, what’s the first name? Speaking of responsibility.”
…the report is still there.
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/11/fleeced.htm
Should be removed (or just blank it out)… where’s that responsibility?
(btw, we’ve already met in SL, you should know which “Nacon” I am…. it’s not even hard to find out, or you could ask Pixeleen if you’re still clueless.)
nekospecial
Jan 30th, 2007
But I’m not talking about petty griefing. I’m talking about your little friends crashing the entire grid. We all know that they did that, and we all know that the Lindens adopted a curiously ambiguous attitude toward this problem because at the end of the day, the programmers dealing with it treated it like a red and blue team combat game, not the problem of how to maintain a civilized world for other, non-sandboxing customers.
I can only assume the “we” that Prok is referring to here, are all the voices in her head that agree with her. Because as far as I’ve read, nobody in the real world does.
There’s a reason why you’re banned in so many places in SL, Prok. Until you learn to take a good hard look into the mirror, nobody will ever take you seriously. And it’s funny you continue to label others as “grifers” — that’s like the pot calling the kettle black.
This will be my first and only message to you, since I try to make it a habit not to feed the trolls.
nekospecial
Jan 30th, 2007
P.S. to Baba: you hit the nail on the head completely in that last post, and articulated exactly what’s always bugged me about Prok. Kudos!
Prokofy Neva
Jan 30th, 2007
>…the report is still there.
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/11/fleeced.htm
>Should be removed (or just blank it out)… where’s that responsibility?
Why should a story be removed? This isn’t Orwell, at least, you haven’t taken over yet to make it Orwell. That link doesn’t work, btw, here it is:
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/11/fleeced.html
The story is corrected, as indicated. I put a correction in the comments as soon as I had persuasive evidence that my sources had been mistaken and/or deliberately misled me. What of it? Look at Reuters or the Blingsider, and see how many times they have to cross out and correct stories in the moving target that is Second Life. I refuse to be bullied or intimidated. SL needs critical coverage. I’m here to give it that critical coverage.
And I believe it is absolutely right to keep raising the unanswered questions that I raised all through that long thread and later on my blog, which I won’t rehearse here merely because you are a lazy and vindictive troll: the ESC had a staff member in libsecondlife and another member who knew about it beforehand; libsecondlife has griefing members who have made griefing a sport and a lucrative business and have created and/or exploited LandBot, CampBot, and Campbot; the ESC has used a bot itself and says it is unrelated to othese other abusive devices, but basically has little to say about the other bots; and ultimately, retains their supportive and inclusive relationship with libsecondlife, and when asked about this repeatedly, merely show irritation, erase the posts from their blog, or harangue me inworld.
Some people in libsecondlife, when confronted with the absence of ethics of John Hurliman, left the group, and chastised the miscreants on their own lists. Other remain in the group.
You can bully, harass, ridicule, bait, and humiliate me all you like, but I am standing my the concerns that prompted me to write this story in the first place: that the exigencies of developing software and bringing in big business have caused a variety of players, from Lindens to their metaversal myrmidons, to scorn the settlers of the world and the integrity of the world itself. That scorn may manifest itself in indifference, ridicule, impatience with explaining themselves, smug superiority, or it may manifest itself in deliberate, vicious, harassment, but there is a class warfare in Second Life, we can all see it.
So bait and harass away, Nacon, I don’t need to justify what I do, but you need to justify why you post with a nickname when you bait and harass reporters in the comment sections : )
Kamilion Schnook
Jan 31st, 2007
For anyone actually interested in the behind the scenes, I received Our Fine Editor’s approval to post the log
Here it is: http://www.sllabs.com/botcave-1-28-07.txt
You should also be able to click my name to be taken to it.
Be warned, if you’re trying to access this past june 2007, it may not exist anymore. I’ll try to keep it up until then. ^_^
Kamilion Schnook
Jan 31st, 2007
#1, my name and address are available to the public from a whois on my domain. If you don’t know how to do this, then you will just have to learn if you want to track me down that bad. Would you like me to post a link to google maps with a satellite photo of the room I’m in? I’ve never been anonymous on the net, in fact, when I started out here, you were required to give out correct information for domain registry. Now anyone can register a domain with false info.
#2, There was a time when one could freely register SL accounts with cellular phones, and I had used many friends and family’s phones to register alts, long before libsecondlife. Later, anyone could register for an SL account, completely free, they were only limited to 5 a day. I took advantage of this. At the moment, were I to register any new accounts, I would have to pay the $10 for each additional account like everyone else.
#3, If you’re really that concerned about what libsl can and cannot do, then perhaps you should keep an eye on the repository here: http://opensecondlife.org/svn/index.cgi/libsl?view=rev&revision=927
That’s the latest revision as of this posting. You can use the left and right arrows next to the [GO] Button to flip backwards or forwards in time. Each of these revision is one or many files being slightly changed or improved. If you click on ‘Modified’, it will show you exactly which lines have been changed. In this way, many many people build up the library’s contents and sample applications. As far as I can see in the repository, LandBot and CampBot don’t seem to exist. Of note, is TestClient, which is the current generation command line client. It contains no notable functions to search for nor purchase land. As camping is a matter of sitting on something, that can be performed. All of it is nicely segmented up into little chunks of code, which is pretty much human readable if you tilt your head far enough.
Anything not in that repository is not part of libsecondlife, but possibly may be using it, the same way Second Life itself uses many libraries like it in it’s makeup, including FMOD for streaming audio and sound playback, Quicktime for streaming video, and Kakadu / openjpeg for Jpeg2000.
Most of those communities have no control if Second Life chooses to use those libraries, and likewise, libsecondlife has no control of this either.
#4, I actually support your thought that we should be the ones to make this, but we shouldn’t be the ones to run it. We’re not economists or politicians or such things. Eventually, the system may/will support a governance system. But for now, the amount of people we have is woefully inadequate, so we have to rely on the code to implement security for us currently. Eventually the virtual world will catch up to the real world and we’ll see many more people like you that have to rely on ideas and using them to help others translate them into worldly rules in code.
I may not be the most educated man, but I do see that others also have a tendency to educate themselves on topics they have interests in. Birdwatchers learn about birds and perhaps latin, Scuba divers learn about fish and coral as well as valves and regulators. And possibly a little latin there as well for the fish! Most of these people can either self-educate or receive instruction. I tend to spend a lot of my time helping others understand code too. I don’t really ask anything in return for it, because I have an interest in it myself, and an interest in attempting to assist others.
#5, If the creator of landbot wants to sell his code, he’s within his realworldly legal right to do so. The GPL doesn’t actively prohibit this. But attempting to attribute libsecondlife to any one person is completely wrong. There’s at least 20 people who actively make changes and submit them back to the repository, and likely another 50 who have contributed small bits they saw missing like I have.
#6, It seems like when you say community, and when you hear others say community, you think they’re speaking of the global community. In reality, we are actually speaking of nested sub-communities. When I spoke of community earlier, I was speaking about the community that had gathered around libsecondlife. Likewise, there are other communities. It’s become a common buzzword recently to call these subclasses of community “A Community”. It may not mesh perfectly well with it’s real world counterpart, but us folks on the internet seem to have appropriated it.
#7, ESC is a company, and they are free to remove whatever data you enter into their site. They are correct in their statement that it is unrelated to the other abusive clients. A recent addition to TestClient is the requirement of passing a contact email address to the linden login servers, so that we non-infringing users can be tracked and identified, and hopefully the infringing clients will be locked out one day. Of course, nothing is stopping anyone from just supplying a fake email address at dodgeit.com or mailinator.
I am not at this to bully you, harass you, or ridicule you, nor am I attempting to humiliate you. (you’re doing that last one yourself, sad to say.)
You are most welcome to your concerns, But you may not be welcome to rely on other people to host your concerns on the internet. Computer programmers and computer users can be a vicious bunch. Anyone who’s ever been on IRC knows that *EVERYONE* loves to be an asshole and say grossly misappropriate things about your living and/or dead family members and possibly specific body parts and actions. There is no /sarcasm command. (God I wish there was.) Often we say things we’d never ever carry through in real life. And I agree that it would be nice if people were different, but I’ve been on IRC for over 10 years and in hundreds of channels, and from all that time I’ve wasted, I’ve come away with one thing:
People on IRC are assholes… Until you spend enough time around them to get to know them. But even then, if there is even a single chanop who doesn’t like you, or the color of your shirt today, you can be kicked and banned for no reason at all.
It comes as no surprise that many IRCers have migrated to Second Life. We are a superstitious and leery bunch. Bring us a shrubbery, and you may be spared.
Ni.
Prokofy Neva
Jan 31st, 2007
>Anything not in that repository is not part of libsecondlife, but possibly may be using it, the same way Second Life itself uses many libraries like it in it’s makeup, including FMOD for streaming audio and sound playback, Quicktime for streaming video, and Kakadu / openjpeg for Jpeg2000.
This is the lamest piece of bullshit which is at the heart of most of the libsecondlife bullshit. You create a repository system where people are supposed to list what they do, evidently with their names, so others can see how it is progressing, take it, rework it, whatever, a kind of public bulletin board.
Except, not everybody abides by this rule, and some people never post, or post sporadically, or don’t post the bad things they do, or some people grab what they see there, and use it for nefarious means.
Then the people on the bulletin board say, oh, we’re not to blame, we’re innocent, because we just put it out there, but we’re not involved in how our stuff is used.
It’s like putting out a rack of guns and saying, oh, if someone takes this and shoots it, we’re not to blame.
It’s just the height of blind selfishness and lack of community awareness. It’s especially lame because the people grabbing the stuff aren’t some strangers, but people right in the group anyway. In the case of CopyBot, the very founder of the group. So the excuses of “we didn’t do it,” or “we can’t control it” are especially fake.
Prokofy Neva
Jan 31st, 2007
>5, If the creator of landbot wants to sell his code, he’s within his realworldly legal right to do so. The GPL doesn’t actively prohibit this.
Here’s the other patently lame and suspect concept in this system. It sets up a system with an alibi of altruism and community spirit and “opensourcedness,” and then enables any one person to take what’s up there and use it for private gain without even informing the others what he’s doing or how he’s changed it. Suddenly, he can opt out of the entire fake altruistic project and do WTF he wants and make a profit and “the community” be screwed. That’s why I say open source=closed society. At any moment, any idiot can undo the altruism and openness and close it for his own gain.
If the whiney response is, “But that’s how it’s done, and that’s how Mozilla does it,” I can only say, “Mozilla doesn’t crash other people’s computers or harm their businesses along the way to working on open source”. You don’t read of a 1,000 malicious Mozilla spinoffs roaming the Internet causing havoc based on the original code.
Ethics and personal codes of honour don’t seem to apply here, or at least, the absence of ethic and the “I get to do WTF I want” rules.
In the SL context, this is particularly malevolent, and John Hurliman, Baba Yamamoto, and others have been an obvious example, where the person who founded the group, and their supporters then create or deploy malevolent versions of the code, laugh at everybody’s misfortune, sell the code, even sell antidoes to the code. It couldn’t get more cynical or abusive with these fucktards crying, “We do it because we can” at every turn.
All these cultural, political, and technical features of open-source as we have seen it in SL, and no doubt other places as we can read of critics of open-source, lead one to adopt a position supporting only proprietary development, which is tethered more to a company’s bottom line, their grown-up employees, and their reputation.
The idea that ESC is “free to remove what they like from their servers” isn’t disputed. But the idea that a company made up of privileged residents, who signed NDAs, and received favours, and begins to acquire tremendous influence over features, then ruling the public discourse by either bullying those who discuss them even from posting elsewhere — that’s what we have to worry about.
As for “humiliating myself,” I fear not. You’re in a hothouse environment where you haven’t even begun to see the forces that will shut you down because you are undermining civilization. I’m merely an early warning system of such forces, not a particularly clever or apt version of them.
I don’t get why the rest of the world has to tolerate computer programmers who are a vicious and unethical bunch. It’s more than fine to fight them to the hilt, expose their lack of ethics and crude behaviour, and bring them to heel. In fact, the more people who can get in on the act and take part in this very necessary public duty of curbing this class of raging assholes, the better. The way you make a society and world matters. If you make it by or with people who are raging assholes abusing others, it leaves its mark. I’m not willing to stand by while that happens.
I’m not interested in having my world be ruled by vulgar, arbitrary, and abusive chanops. That’s not the rule of law, and it’s not universality, it’s petty, ugly Balkanization and a million fucked-up insane warlords. Ultimately, it’s not even in the interests of the programmers’ class, either. And in fact, not all programmers or those in IT have this culture of the vicious hackster. Only those who are deliquents do.
You’re absolutely right that your sub-sub-sect around libsl and your little Linden pals is no Community; it’s not even the Community of Second Life. It’s just your sect. If it is the most privileged caste, that means nothing as far as its legitimatacy, long-term.
Anyway, keep talking, it’s all good for the public record that is part of exposing and curbing you. The main takeaway is that nobody should be paying for this group of assholes to develop software, grab whatever they can for their own profit along the way, and destroy others’ businesses.
Panda
Jan 31st, 2007
I don’t get why the rest of the world has to tolerate neo-commie writing hacksters who are a vicious and unethical bunch. It’s more than fine to fight them to the hilt, expose their lack of ethics, crude behaviour and hipocrisy, and bring them to heel. In fact, the more people who can get in on the act and take part in this very necessary public duty of curbing this class of raging assholes, the better. The way you make a society and world matters. If you make it by or with people who are raging assholes abusing others, it leaves its mark. I’m not willing to stand by while that happens.
I’m not interested in having my world be ruled by vulgar, arbitrary, and abusive baby baronesses. That’s not the rule of law, and it’s not universality, it’s petty, ugly bastardization and a million fucked-up insane words. Ultimately, it’s not even in the interest of the neo-commie baby-baroness’ class either. And in fact, not all writers or land barons have this culture of the vicious forum hackster. Only those completely lost to critical thinking and discourse do.
You’re absolutely right that your sub-sub-sect around your blog and your little trolling pals is no Community; it’s not even the Community of Second Life. It’s just your sect. If it is the most loud mouthed caste, that means nothing as far as it’s legitimacy, long term.
Anyway, keep talking, it’s all good for the public record that is part of exposing and curbing you. The main takeaway is that nobody should be paying attention to this group of assholes who whine and bitch and spin whatever they can for their own profit along the way, and destroy others’ fun and enjoyment of Second Life.
Prokofy Neva
Jan 31st, 2007
Baba,
>You don’t have the understanding of the issue to offer anything interesting to the debate.
You cannot lock out intelligent, educated people from a discussion about the world and how it will effect them by invoking special, arcane knowledge like some medieval priestly sect. That’s utter and unadulerated bullshit. These things can be explained by analogy; they ARE explained by the normal tekkies who are in corporations, universities, organizations, government who aren’t little fucked-up dweeby hacksters like you all. Real tekkies in the Real World not hiding behind hicks on IRC channels have these kinds of discussions, and should have more of them. More and more people WILL get involved in these issues and take stands on them and jumping up and down like little spoiled toddlers, whining that nobody understands you special baby language, will not be convincing them.
Why? Because they’re the ones who will either pay for this stuff that you think you’re such hot shit making, or they will use it and want accountability from the hotshitsters. Or they will see it has detrimental effects on people, demonstrably documented, and they will wish to regulate it. Sorry, but you can go on invoking pitchforks mobs and laughign at them but then either they will skew your ass or something more sophisticated like a gaming commission will say, wait, we don’t want bots going over the entire Internet copying content.
>You show this by your dismissal of so many important issues with your flippant remarks and “you’re no better than thugs/monsters/Bolsheviks/griefers” comments.
I don’t dismiss important issues; I analyze them, see that the tendencies and mechanisms work EXACLTY like Bolsheviks and authoritarianism of various stripes over the ages and CALL YOU ON IT. That’s where you can’t stand it; being judged, being analyzed, being exposed. A tiny avant-garde of the “scientifical and proven superior” trying to take over a world is the oldest story in the book. There are always people who battle these assholes, sometimes even from among their own ranks. Tiny elites don’t get to rule worlds for ever. Sorry, but arcane knowledge didn’t work to keep say, the Catholic Church in power over everybody, and it can’t work for you, either.
>If you were capable of supporting your arguments any other way you wouldn’t need to use charged language to sway people. As if by sheer force of will and an overwhelming supply of words you can cover up the truth and supplant it with your own.
There’s no covering up of the truth. It’s a sharp analysis and a sharp, cutting exposure. It’s actually what’s called for when you are faced with wankers like you — tendentious, immature snobs who lord it over others. You need to strongest possible pushback. Your behaviour in world when you’ve stalked, harassed and bullied me with your now-banned W-hat goons (like at Reuters) are exemplary of this fucked-up attidude. So often, no one puts up a fight against you because they don’t understand what you are up to. I do : )
>You accuse the people you call “tekkies” of not caring about anyone elses point of view, but it has always seemed to me that you are the one dismissing your opposition out of hand.
There are plenty of people defending the tekkie point of view around this joint, non-representative of RL. Therefore I don’t have to bend over backward and try to genuflect every five minutes to this point of view. I defend my own point of view which matches that of other liberal, thoughtful non-tekkies and I strike back. In your tribal, conformist network, you can’t stop until you *bring to heel* somebody who disagrees with you. What you fail to realize is that I start with a critique of you and I *keep it*. It doesn’t change the more information I get; it only deepens because the mechanisms are all so visible. ‘
I can confidently say “we” because there are many people in SL — likely a majority — who are thoroughly unimpressed with your low ethics and absence of any moral compass. They think it stinks. They hate it. You provoked their anger and ire over CopyBot and you will never live it down. They don’t suffer from FUD; they merely have had the tekkie-bullshit veil pulled away and seen that we are dealing with unscrupulous monsters. There’s nothing to do except to go on savagely exposing this monstrosity; it really rots.
>I think more of the “tekkies” would respond to your arguments if you could deliver them without accusations and insults on every other line. Instead, replace them with an argument that can stand on its own.
My arguments do stand on their own. I’ve outlined in copious detail on my blog series about “Liberated Second Life” who appalling unfair, unjust, unsupervised, unscrupulous, immoral, and even illogical this entire Libsecondlife saga has been in Second Life.
Your good friend Philip even comments rather drily to me that with open-sourcing, there will now be 10,000 more hackers — and the context is clear, that if we didn’t like these unscrupulous immoral assholes in libsl — which we don’t — the hope is that more decent and thoughtful programmers will come along will not only possibly be better programmers, as they are not consumed with showing their big dicks to the Lindens all the time and trying to get blowjobs from them, but will stick to the task at hand and also monitor what is very likely to prove to be sloppy and slapdash work by all kinds of unschooled kids and too-inexperienced Lindens. That’s all to the good, I suppose, unless the 10,000 merely contain more types without moral compasses.
>I’ve given you my opinion on matters of open source and protocols before. Others have also shared well reasoned opinions with you. Why not do them the courtesy of responding in kind
Your arguments are not well-reasoned. You deliver, pat, rigid, orthodox homilies of the type “The Internet was like this” and religious doctrines like “open source is good because the Internet was made from it” that are patently shallow. You can’t have respect for your argumentations when all you do is mouth religious precepts and then browbeat people into believing them on faith, or worse, grief them to death inworld to ridicule and humiliate them because they refuse to believe your newfangled religion.
No, Baba, I know I’m not alone when I say that you are a raging fucktard who has earned the undying hatred of quite a few people in SL for your immature and inconsiderate antics.
Artemis Fate
Jan 31st, 2007
“If you were capable of supporting your arguments any other way you wouldn’t need to use charged language to sway people. As if by sheer force of will and an overwhelming supply of words you can cover up the truth and supplant it with your own.”
Yeah, I tried that basic appeal to debative decency, but Prokofy seems perfectly happy just making up conspiracy theories and insulting people rather than making any actual arguments.
I have heard it suggested that Prokofy has a mental disorder called Narcissistic personality disorder, seems to work pretty well:
Diagnostic criteria:
At least five of the following are necessary for a diagnosis (as with many DSM diagnoses, they must form a pervasive pattern; for example, a person who shows these criteria only in one or two relationships or situations would not properly be diagnosed with NPD):
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by other special people
4. requires excessive admiration
5. strong sense of entitlement
6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
9. arrogant affect.
Seems like it fits, except doused with a strong sense of paranoia.
Artemis Fate
Jan 31st, 2007
This one works well too:
Paranoid Personality Disorder
A. A pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
1. suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her
2. is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates
3. is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her
4. reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events
5. persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights
6. perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack
7. has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding fidelity of spouse or sexual partner.
B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of schizophrenia, a mood disorder with psychotic features, or another psychotic disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition.
hotlips Tornado
Jan 31st, 2007
I’m pretty new to this blog but I have to admit that Prok’s rants are becoming very tedious.
I might have to stop reading the Herald. Interesting as it is, it’s currently dominated by a character who is stifling debate by shouting the most.
What’s that other paper called? The Avatard or something? Where else can I read about the goings on in SL without all this ranting?
Panda
Jan 31st, 2007
“You cannot lock out intelligent, educated people from a discussion about the world and how it will effect them by invoking special, arcane knowledge like some medieval priestly sect.”
So, you say knowlege of computers and technical things is so beyond your understanding that it’s like magic to you? A matter of faith?
Oh this is just rich: “Try to discuss ideas, and stop it with the personal attacks.”
And then in a post lacking any sort of derogatory remarks aimed at Prok, it follows up with:
“who aren’t little fucked-up dweeby hacksters like you all.”
“It’s actually what’s called for when you are faced with wankers like you — tendentious, immature snobs who lord it over others.”
“you are a raging fucktard who has earned the undying hatred of quite a few people in SL”
Hypocrite, Prok.
“Tiny elites don’t get to rule worlds for ever.”
No, they don’t. Your time is now over. You are irrelevant. It’s over. Go home.
“I defend my own point of view which matches that of other liberal, thoughtful non-tekkies and I strike back.”
Here you try to set up your scary “tekkies” on one side, and normal, decent people on the other. Can it be more obvious than this? Technically educated people are PEOPLE too, and they think you are just as full of it as non-techie people.
You, Prok, are the one being exposed here, as a lying, manipulating hateful person who is so beyond help all you can do is wallow in the mire of your “glorious” past and bitch and moan to make people believe you have any relevance.
Artemis Fate
Jan 31st, 2007
“What’s that other paper called? The Avatard or something? Where else can I read about the goings on in SL without all this ranting?”
AvaStar, Avatard is what Urizenus calls it.
Personally I think AvaStar has too much of a happy-go-lucky corporate PR view of SL, but it certainly has absolutely no Prokofy and other such rantings, and you can probably learn about atleast some good happenings in SL. I like the Herald because it comments on the little things negative or positive and is more personal and down to earth, and I unfortunately tend to fall for Prokofy’s trolling (it’s hard not too, but definately trying to cut back on that).
Besides that, there’s Metaverse messenger, which is always a nice professionally made newspaper sort of deal.