“OMFGX0RZ!!11one!! PWNX0R THE BARBARIAN CONNED ME OUT OF 5 COPPER!!” *calls attorney*

That is all we need in this country, even more frivolous lawsuits to tie up our legal system and eat up our tax money. Give me a break.

Second of all, it is Linden Labs policy that loss of money due to weak scripting is entirely the fault of the person running the script.

Tie these two factors together, and you would see people intentionally writing weak scripts, knowing that somebody will rip them off, and abuse the legal system to get them in trouble.

Doesn’t anybody use their brain anymore? THINK A LITTLE, PEOPLE!

A gambler agrees to the terms of the game simply by playing, even though the odds are weighted in favor of “the house”. Winning odds of 1% or 49% are equally “fair”.

However, exploiting a flaw in the code in order to effectively change the odds in favor of the player — in this case 100% odds of winning, essentially — this is clearly unfair and wrong.

Forget about legality. Think of this in terms of ethics, because that’s what really matters. Bob clearly did not intend for someone to be able to take 200,000 lindens from him in this manner. Therefore, it was wrong to do so.

There is no justification for unethical behavior.

P.S. I’m an American

The fact of the matter is that this is not theft. This is on the same level as someone getting a can of corn for free by using two 50% off coupon on double coupon day.

What if the story was “oops my scripter calculated the odds wrong, please give the money back to me so i can re-rig the system in my favor to make sure you lose next time”, would it still be theft?

More than one person (myself included) told Bob exactly why this was a very dangerous idea months ago… which didn’t stop him from hiring the cheapest person who was willing to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. (I wonder if this is the same system he sold for 150,000 lindens a mere 10 days later… strange he mentioned that to his shareholders but left out the part where the system lost him 100k). I’m willing to bet it’s STILL totally unsecure on the server side as well… probably something like…. http://www.bobpsage.com/send_money_secret_page_123.php?id=&amt=12345&password=bob

Ryozu Kojima taught me to pretend your script is going to be distributed with full permissions and then look for ways to have it still be secure, which is brilliant advice. We’ve had permissions bugs reveal scripts full perms more than once over the years, even as recently as last month. Encryption and passwords are by no means bullet proof, which goes double in SL.

(Incedentally, IMing an offline Philip Linden to complain that someone exploited a system you designed in order to break the rules isn’t a very good way to get a problem solved, especially considering that most linden’s IMs get capped within about 15 minutes of them going offline).

So now, neither of them holds the high ground. And nor does Hashimoto, since he claimed security for his script, falsely.

Of course, Perry took the half-payment by deceit in order to recoup at least SOME of his loss. Instead of “Plse” though, he should have said “Plse return half the money if you think that is right, but I will claim against you for the remainder as well.” It would then have been up to Fox.

Hopefully lessons were learned all round.

All this being said, Bob was a fool for not using encryption to handle comm in any money transaction. It’s likely he won’t get his money back, but at least it’s only 400US$ and not thousands as has happened to the Dark Life people.

Given the enormous number of scams and con-tricks and freebie sales and so on in SL, gambling now seems a relatively harmless way to waste your money. People find it fun at least, as opposed to being ripped off by a scripting exploit, which few people find fun. The subject of camping, of course, is a different matter, but a HUD gambling device means no campsites, which seems like progress to me.

I don’t know, nothing I said stated I had trouble understanding this concept.

“But calling it scamming might be a criminal act (defamation).”

I doubt it. Gambling is already a form of scamming, since it’s an unfair game (talking more about Dealer to player games like Slots and Black Jack, than player to player like Poker), but add on that Gambling is illegal in SL now, and that these are Slots (probably the easiest gambling system to consistently scam people with), I don’t think it’s a stretch at all. The point is to get the person’s money without giving them anything in return, at least Frosty gave half back, I don’t see Bob doing the same.