Marsellus Wallace

P.S. Hi tp! Missed you! haha

In response to the e-mail I sent Philip:

————————————————–
Hi Jeremy,

Nice to meet you! I’ll answer an unconventional email in an equally
unconventional way. First, I’m copying James Cook – he was one of the
first developers of SL, is a critical part of LL, and is mind-alteringly
smart. He also lives in Sacramento, so may I suggest that you guys just
figure out a way to meet and we take it from there.

As to the customer service issues, I am copying Daniel, who runs
customer service. He can read this through and either see what we are
doing wrong or defend our thinking on the charges.

best,

Philip
————————————————–

Here is James e-mail to me shortly after this:

————————————————–
Jeremy,

I’m one of the developers on Second Life. I was employee 5, so I’ve been here since the beginning.

Send me your resume.

I presume you are this JC Soprano:
http://www.alphavilleherald.com/archives/000089.html and that you used to run one of the Sims Online mafias. A primary interview question, if you get an interview, will be “Convince me you’re not evil.”

Sorry to take so long to respond, but I had a family medical emergency. It’s better now.

James
————————————————–

After I sent him my resume I did the phone interview with James shortly after. There were no telecommuting opportunities at the time and I did not feel like driving to San Frisco everyday to go to work (90 minute commute with no traffic) so it was not a good fit at the time. Perhaps they see value in “virtual celebrities” or they see the inherit(sp) skill they may have obtained to get to where they are. Who knows?

Look at it this way… Kevin Mitnick(sp) is now a security consultant after he did hard time for computer crimes. The best way to protect your virtual assets to have people in place who know how to unprotect them. Sounds bass ackwords I know, but most techy companies think inside the box and what they need is someone who will think outside the box.

Marsellus Wallace

“I wouldn’t be about to contribute to something W-Hat is part of.

coco”

Best be unassing secondlife most rikki tik then eh?

Ethics be damned! Cancer is an ugly thing. In this case, for me (and maybe I’m unethical) pragmatism wins out.

Whatever, the contributions go down in the records as coming from W-Hat, largely because off how scripted payment systems work. And, I suppose a few W-Hatters play the game too, thus contributing a little to the total ‘earned’ – for a worthy cause.

However – the vast bulk of the ‘W-Hat’ contribution comes from non-W-Hat members paying to play, knowing their payment is going to a good cause.

OK, if you want to stand on your ‘principles’ and refuse to involve yourself with W-Hat in any way shape or form, fine. Pat yourself on the back. But I don’t really think you are hurting W-Hat in any way shape or form. You are only hurting a deserving cause.

OK, W-Hat is involved and getting a lot of public credit. So what? You think anyone’s going to turn a blind eye to their less than benign activities because ‘they’ contributed a lot? You think that’s going to make a difference? The only thing it’ll make a difference to is a worthy cause loosing your support because you are allowing prejudice against a small group to blind you to the good they are, however cynically, doing…

Remember, there’s no such thing as ‘clean’ money. It’s how it’s USED that matters. And to be used for good it has to be channeled to a good cause.

This having been said, I don’t see that Prok’s position here is screwy. We would definitely expect an outcry if the cancer ward of a hospital received a million dollars from a mob boss or drug kingpin. These issues come up all the time. I’m not taking sides, I’m just saying that it is the standard question that would be raised in an ethics class. The theory is that if you accept their contribution to a good cause, you make them look legit and people may overlook their bad activities, which, in some cases may outweigh the good of their contribution (I’m not saying that’s the case here) and ultimately lead to more bad happening (even if under the cloak of apparent virtue).

Anyway, it’s a point to argue and I don’t see that either side needs to be acused of wearing tinfoil hats.

I should make t-shirts.