wonder how you sleep

From a random profile:

"Dominance is a whisper.
It doesn't have to push, it coaxes addiction.
Dominance is patient.
Knowing the value of what it seeks, it is not rushed.
Dominance is not brash.
It is a smile, not a smirk. It is honesty not excuses.
Dominance is resolute.
It does not sway or collapse when tested.
Dominance is steady.
Like a mountain, it does not bend to the wind, or move for the climber.
Dominance is rare.
Those who crave it the most, have it the least."

A muchness of truth there.

At any rate, something struck me going through my spam folder today:

From: BANK (info @ nocpayment.com)
To: Emilly Orr

Hello,

I reviewed your reputable profile

This made me laugh out loud.

which gives me the intuition that you will be a potential business partner in a crude oil venture of two million barrels monthly involving the National Oil Corporation of Libya (NOC) and Singapore Refining Company Pte (SRC).

Boy, are you barking up the wrong investment tree.

This crude oil venture will gain commissions up to the value of $10 Million

Of course it will.

in revenue approximately per trade with the NOC and I will present you with more entails of this venture subsequent to your response.

"Entails"?

Regards,

Long walk, short pier,

Kevin Wong

Not your real name.

Procurement Department
Singapore Refining Company
Email: info_dept @ execs.com

So, strangely, execs.com is registered in New Jersey of all places, Bedminster to be specific. Even odder, nocpayment.com seems to trace to North Oklahoma College. I was expecting this to be Ukraine or Chinese in derivation, but could this possibly be a local attempt at scamming? Why pretend to be in Libya or Singapore, though? It's very odd.

There is a National Oil Corporation of Libya, as well as a Singapore Petroleum Company, which is the main corporate name of Singapore Refining Company. But SRC is owned by a Chinese concern, PetroChina, with Chevron owning a minor sharehold. But Chevron's corporate headquarters are in California, not New Jersey. Nothing about this makes sense. It's not even a good attempt at grifting.

what has happened to it all? crazy, some would say

This was not my most shining moment.

[22:26] Kxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: hey nice avatar...im new to this game and saved 238 of those linden things from a contest and camping...im trying to get this skin/shape combo for 700...i feel bad for asking but can you please lend me 462 so i can get it?...if not thats fine too...just seems nobody wants to help me out
[22:26] Emilly Orr: Oh, honey, go tell someone who cares.

I know. I know. But seriously, we hear this all the time. And usually it's either "pay my rent" or "buy a skin for me". And no. Just no. Sick of it. SICK of it.

[22:27] Emilly Orr: Get a job, buy Lindens, or find a sugar mama.
[22:27] Emilly Orr: Don't beg. Ever.

He poofed from the event I was at at that point, but I pulled his profile. One day old. One whole day. RL picture for his SL bio page. His total bio at this point?

"Hello Im new to this virtual world and just seeing what its all about. I like extreme sports and my favorite would be surfing. I listen to all kinds of music depending on my mood. Always up for exploring if you know any neat sims to check out let me know.."

So maybe not the bot he sounded like? Though he was wearing something very close to the Philip avatar from 2006, so...I didn't even know avatars that old were still in the library. So that's suspicious on its own, because I'm fairly sure the only way someone new gets that avatar is to get it donated from someone else. Or have your main give your alt that avatar, right?

But yeah, on a better day, I might have been friendlier, and told him about potential employment opportunities and where to look, but I still would have told him not to beg. Because very few people at this point will respond to that. It's nearly always a scam, and one I refuse to fall for.

In other news...



When I rezzed in at Enchantment to check out the new round, this is what I saw. At first I thought she had pastel tattoos that hadn't rezzed in yet; but no, that was just the shading on the skin.



And okay, this is definitely my biases showing, but walking around with a binky? In public? In an adult avatar? Please no.



She did have a cute AO, though.

Her SL bio, by the way? Is complete gibberish. Is anyone surprised?

Ϯ[ƛxxxxxxxx Ƥxxxxxx-ßxxxxxxx Ṩxxxxxx]Ϯ
ϮƤυρρẏ ɠįгℓϮ ϮĻįȶȶℓę/вαвчgιяl TεиdεиcιεѕϮ ϮṨђẏϮ
ϮяǫмąŋȶįcϮ ϮČǫυŋȶгẏ ɠįгℓϮ
ϮNσт ѕнσят jυѕт ƒυи ѕιzεϮ ϮHαиdƒυlϮ ϮBlυитϮ
Ϯƒąмįℓẏ Iѕ ενεяẏтђįиɠϮ

Yeah. Because that's readable.

I mean, look. I try not to kink-shame. As long as the avatar is vaguely proportional, I have nothing against more lush, curvaceous bodies, as long as they look like the body grew that way. Her curves are fine. The piercings and the binky, however, are jarring together. Maybe because one makes me think definitely adult, or at least teen, and the other makes me think of toddlers. The two states do not interact.

Moving on to something equally as baffling:

[22:28] Sxxxxxxx Mxxxxxx: i can not join the group tres chic. Anyone out there who ca help?
[22:28] jxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: o.O

Yeah, that was my reaction. How is she talking in the group she can't join? She's adding two and two and getting nineteen somehow.

[22:28] Sxxxxxxx Mxxxxxx: dang did i call. sorry

Yeah, I only noticed because the 'join the voice call' button popped up, and I declined. Because I always decline.

[22:30] Rxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: I can help..lol
[22:32] Rxxxx Mxxxxx: LOL you are in the group. since you can chat and call from it

Yeah. That.

[22:32] Rxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: The answer is.....You MUST be in the group...or you couldn't talk in this group chat Box...So you are already a member...and you cannot join again

Also that.

[22:32] Gxxxxxxxx Pxxx: well you joined tres chic cause you are taling in it
[22:33] Emilly Orr: Also, Tres Chic is showing up in your groups on your profile...

After that, she stopped talking, so I think she figured out she was already in the group. Kind of dim, there.

knee-deep in water under a pylon

Oh, this is going to get grim. This is the first thing that's made me actually grateful that I haven't bought the materials to start in making things for Etsy (because I was still facing sewing everything by hand, as ten-plus years after moving into this apartment building we still don't have the sewing machine set up), though I did check my bank account in a panic to verify I wasn't one of the people affected. (Spoiler: I'm not, but that may well be because while I have a storefront, it doesn't have product yet.)

According to this Etsy moderator, this wasn't a hack or a mathematical error, but a change to the site itself that caused certain storefronts to be massively overcharged. Which is fine, I suppose (it's not fine), I mean, we're all happy it's not a hack, but...Etsy creators who were hit by this change in code were not happy in general:

TheraClay:

"Etsy drafted $395 out of my checking today?

"WT heck is going on? Did Etsy draft this out of my account? It's showing as a positive balance? I really need a response here, Etsy"

lovestrucksoul:

"My bank just cancelled my card bc Etsy tried to take over $5000 this morning :( I’m standing in the store unable to make a purchase for a crying 5 year old, wth???"

StuffedBras:

"Me Too. Etsy just charge my CC for $344.46 and I already had a postive balance. Now my Balance is showing higher balance by adding what they just charged.

Why doesn't etsy have a email support or phone number to get answers?"

BedazzledWitchery:

"I agree. I find it pretty disgusting Etsy that you continue to charge sellers higher and higher fees for ZERO customer service. We as sellers should have an email support/customer service phone number/chat dialogue. I have been on Etsy for five years, but I am seriously thinking of closing my shop and going to another webhosting/online shop."

Starting to sound like Linden Lab, isn't it?

ApparelArtbyMare:

"Same here. $1266+ was taken. I am definitely concerned. Supposedly I will receive a deposit from them which I should use to pay the debt which is charged on my cc and pending. With banks being closed on Monday this creates a delay of an additional day for the weekend to make sure it is resolved. Very uneasy. I've had alot of success with Etsy for the past 10 years or so but this has truly made me hesitate and wonder what is going on."

Peaceofmindinc:

"Yes, almost 5k was taken out. They deposited the amount into the payment account."

VictoriaLynnBoutique:

"Over $7,200 from mine. Can you say BIG overdraft?? Sucks."

StampedGold:

"Please let us know if they will be refunding credit cards. I do not want to pay any interest or have any actual charges go through on the over $4000 they just charged my $3000 limit credit card!!"

lovestrucksoul again, later in the same thread:

"Suntrust said they tried to charge me over $5,400 10 times :("

That's unconscionable.

SansoneStationery:
"They charged my credit card a heart-stopping $1,634.68 through automatic card payment (even though my sales consistently cover my fees daily)."

SopersCoins:
"They hit me for $1695. They are not legally allowed to charge cards for no reason. They did this on this Friday because this is when people’s biweekly checks get direct deposited. SCAM"

DarolsDivineDesigns:

"Well, they drafted $788.00 out of my bank account today! Completely unacceptable!"

TlcCreatesVintage:

"My card was charged over 1,000 dollars!!! WTF......and now they are just going to deposit that back into our accounts which will take till Tuesday for me to actually have that money!!!!! Not acceptable. It's a three day weekend PEOPLE!! We won't see that money anytime soon"

And it goes on, complaint after complaint, panicked Etsy seller after panicked Etsy seller. Jumping to the end of the thread:

LeafLee:

"I was charged over 1300$ and etys sent it to my bank account after chargeing a fee. Ya'll know most of the people who work for you view even 500$ as alot of money right? I'm a disabled woman just struggling to live here and this is some garbage to deal with. The money should have been returned to my card not sent to my bank account! Etsy REALLY MESSING UP HERE! I HAVE BEEN A LOYAL SELLER FOR OVER A DECADE!!"

ThreadTreasuresEmbro:

"Can you tell me DOES ETSY TEST MODIFICATIONS BEFORE THEY ROLL THEM OUT ONTO PRODUCTION SERVERS? If not, shame on you. If Etsy does, then your testing procedures need to be reviewed.

"This is unacceptable. All sellers need to know EXACTLY what happened."

BlackberryDesigns:

"I am rather shocked, not that this happened, but that Etsy has not been pro-active in making sure we were updated on a hourly basis. Twitter being the best use for this and the forums. Yes you do take in lightly as, once again, we are left in the dark. I suspect this is going to morph into a PR nightmare for Etsy because of their lack of 'Transparency'."

That70sChickVintage:

"The only 'site change' that I can think of is the change in forums. Has there been a security breach or hack?

"How could a 'site change' arbitrarily charge various amounts to Etsy Seller accounts/credit/debit cards ranging in the hundreds to the thousands of dollars?

"There should be regular updates in the announcement section, pinned to the top until this issue is resolved.

"CEO needs to put out a statement as to what this 'site change' was that allowed this to happen.

"With all due respect, hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges made in error deserves more than a brief update in the 'bugs' section."

MinxouriVintage:

"What site changes?

"The ones on that page where they list experiments.

"Oh yeah, they removed that a week ago."

SavoyFaire:

"Not only did I have mid month charges on Friday that bounced but I have charges on Tuesday that will now bounce as well as late fees and my credit rating will be affected. We trust you with our cards. Why wasn't this immediately sent like that Paypal offers now funds hit within half an hour by end of day Friday. That team should have stayed until every one was made whole. Who would even just say oh well they can wait until Tuesday to hit Wednesday especially with a holiday weekend? Not handled right at all."

CARUSSDESIGNZ:

"This is very unprofessional esp with all the changed. And the fact that even the Forums have changed and you need 2 'sign in' is truly crazy. Etsy is becoming more like eBay and that was why eBay Sellers came 2 Etsy in the first place. Im NOT very happy. Very very unprofessional and WE the Sellers have 2 pay the price for it. ON top of that with yet another Holiday and weekend, another delay. Would YOU like 2 get paid late ?"

SimonsTreasures:

"I want to know how we're going to get in touch with Etsy to discuss the credit card charges or bank fees that they've promised to pay. They don't answer the phone. I've called an Etsy number they sent me and they don't answer. An automated message tells you how to receive a call back and then they never call. So, they are going to pay the fees incurred, but how do we tell them what the fees are?"

soulharborjewelry:

"As a seller, I'm extremely concerned about all of this. I received the email from Etsy that my deposit was returned to my payment account so my bank account won't be seeing any money from Etsy until later this week. I'm also concerned about this from a buyer's perspective. I've read posts on other social media sites about people not wanting to buy on Etsy because of this. If you think this isn't hurting ALL of us, you're dead wrong. I've had a pretty quiet weekend for sales and I'm worried that this has already impacted my income."

SweetEscapesbyDebbie:

"This is absolutely ridiculous. Etsy attempted an $18,900 charge which did not go through on my bank account but now my account is frozen on a holiday weekend. Absolutely inexcusable."

Absolutely, I agree. There is no conceivable coding situation I can envision for an e-commerce site that would deduct such high--and seemingly completely random--amounts from their clients, and worse, the fact that they're not simply returning them to the same accounts charged, but rather, putting the fund back to each Etsy seller's 'payments' account--which means each seller has to manually send those funds back to their banks--this is going to cause even more overdrafts, stress, and all manner of panic.

Etsy will suffer over this. People are already talking about moving over to Redbubble, Shopify, society6 and other e-commerce sites over this issue. This is dire. And Etsy is doing very, very little to reassure anyone.

my confusion left me as fast as the vertigo came

This link will require you to agree to enter a blog with "adult" concepts and themes, but I promise you--this particular entry is completely safe for work. (You're on your own if you backspace to look through the blog itself.)

What you'll be seeing, however, is a collection of gravestones from Romani families in Donetsk, Ukraine. Unless we are Rom ourselves, or allied to the Rom in some way, all we likely understand about them in the Ukraine is how many were shot in mass graves during the Nazi occupation. And while that is important knowledge in itself, those mass graves, if they are marked at all at this point, will have at most a memorial tablet over the entire site.

Heads of families are very honored in Romani culture, however. They are frequently gifted, feted, and when they are dying--or dead, if death occurs suddenly--the call will go out for every relative to come to the bedside, and in general, this is exactly what happens. Money will be pooled to honor the fallen one, so--even if their lives were lived invisibly, for most of us--these etched stone portraits will remain.

While it is far, far beyond the reach of most of us, I remain comforted that there's at least one prosthetic limb studio who strives to move beyond standard replacement limbs that simply replace what's missing, and into actual prosthetics that not only suit the client's support needs, but their artistic, psychological and emotional needs, as well.

In other news, did you know that bumblebees see electrical fields? I know I didn't, and I'm utterly fascinated by the precision their reading of these electrical fields is. They can tell the difference between a high-pollen flower and a low-pollen one, or even whether another bee has already gathered the nectar and pollen from a flower. That's incredible.

In other science news, Duke University researchers have made an unprecedented discovery: by implanting a sensor chip near the tactile center of their brains, the brains of their test subjects gained the ability to 'touch' infrared light, and even to see it to a certain extent. If this technology proves out, it potentially could be implanted in the brains of the blind, so they will have an additional sense they can draw on to inform them of where they are.

And given another year, the FBI in the US will begin monitoring all all online chats. Well, I shouldn't say all, I doubt there are enough people in the world to monitor all chatrooms out there, but they will be targeting "suspicious" feeds. The problem is, for most of us (again), we won't know what's considered a "suspicious" feed, so we'll never know when we're being monitored.

Of course, this all goes back to online privacy in the first place--nothing posted online is private. If it is, then it hasn't been posted online.

And, if anyone needs a hovering mesh pig with inexplicable flatulence issues...there's one free on the Marketplace.

tracing lines to what connects me and binds me to (pt. I)

Somewhat in response to the news that Blizzard's North American servers had been hacked, the City of Heroes team installed a pop-up that warned to keep player information secure, and change passwords often. Of course, this caused some controversy for those who didn't know about the hacking of Blizzard's WoW servers:

[Help] Aeon Emperor: what recent events caused the personal info popup?
[Help] Fire-kissed: Blizzard lost a bunch of personal details
[Help] Fire-kissed: To hackers
[Help] Fire-kissed: Nothing to do with NCSoft
[Help] Aeon Emperor: ok. thanks.
[Help] Firebomb: If you think Blizzard is gonna be secure with your personal info...then you're gonna have a bad time.
[Help] Demonlord Mephiles: it's just in case you played WoW and use the same password on both games
[Help] Bonnie Beatdown: really makes you want to use their real money auction house now doesn't it
[Help] Kneecapitator: I wouldn't trust Blizzard with my granny's ashes, much less my credit card number.
[Help] Third Discipline: credit card info was not compromised

Well, that's actually tricky. Non-matching encryption-secured passwords were compromised, along with identifying information (including emails and security question answers) for credit card data, so...I think that's about 50/50. Actual numbers? No. Everything a thief might need to change your security question by use of your email? Seems likely.

[Help] Temporal Surgeon: I thought NCSoft did suffer a breach
[Help] Vibrobeast: yeah. once that annual pass is over i'm done with wow.
[Help] Firebomb: No, just your billing adress. I'd sooner give a stranger my CC number than my adress.

Not entirely sure that billing addresses were in the data grab, but bank information was. So again, I'd say that's about 50/50.

[Help] Temporal Surgeon: anyway I wouldn't trust Blizzard with personal info anyway but in a pretty dramatic way anyone who plays WoW trusts them with a LOT of personal info due to Warden
[Help] Demonlord Mephiles: maybe this helps to pry a few players away from wow
[Help] Kneecapitator: They don't need help driving off their own players at this point, really.
[Help] Damgun: How have things been going since the whole panda jumping the shark thing?

Yeah, about that...Watching the official World of Warcraft trailer for the Pandaria expansion makes the class seem epic beyond all boundaries...at least until 1:37 in, where the first Pandaran is revealed. Almost instantly, though, an entire slew of Kung-Fu Panda parodies involving the class arose on YouTube, and even now, it causes a lot of head-shaking, both from those who play, and those who don't. The news that Blizzard was widely hacked--even for Diablo information, not WoW info specifically--was pretty much just the cherry on the rancid sundae, frankly.

[Help] Ringmaster Diablos: Weren't pandas always in warcraft though?
[Help] Vibrobeast: they jumped that shark over 10 years ago. seemed fine for awhile.
[Help] Kneecapitator: No clue, quit back in November and never looked back.

I suppose that's one way to deal with the problem, but it seems somewhat severe. And yes, to answer the first question, Pandarans were in WoW before, but never as player characters. They were always these round, generally happy mockeries of Asian culture. It's just that with the new update, they can be round mockeries of Asian culture that players can play.

[Help] Temporal Surgeon: I tried playing WoW a few times. It seemed like an OK game and (at the time) a lot better developed than CoX on a number of fronts but a huge amount of people I encountered were completely socially retarded

That, too. Just like any other wide-spanning MMO, there's a lot of folks who are there just to kill things in any way they can--and some of those ways include insulting other players, sexually harassing female players, and in general being utter complete idiots online simply because they can. WoW isn't the hate-spewing visigoth of stunning emotional upset that games like Call of Duty or Battlefield can be. (And I still remember what happened to Anita Sarkeesian when she dared to use Kickstarter to fund a series of female gaming tropes for public dispersal. And do I even need to bring up Borderlands' "girlfriend mode option?)

[Help] Third Discipline: So what is it about Blizzard that attracts so much hate? It almost has to be jealousy or something, because I generally don't get upset about companies I just don't care about.
[Help] Vibrobeast: then they literally defaced the diablo franchise

Oh, in so many ways...

But I don't think it's jealousy, actually. I think it's comprised in equal parts of the filtering gloss of nostalgia, combined with what folks believed about the Diablo property, itself.

While there are a lot of games (more than I can even go into) that feature dystopian futures, Diablo managed to find a way to combine leveling, gear advancement, and character interaction with the "it's all going to end in tears" mentality--and I won't lie, something about that combination was magic, because the first Diablo game was insanely popular. Then came Diablo II, and the introduction of Battle.net. Now, we had a bigger world to play in, more options, and we had two forms of playing with friends--locally, via a LAN connection, or online with several other players. (I've played Diablo II on LAN mode, but never played Battle.net--I favored a mod that was legal--basically, a way to keep both life potions and mana potions at the same time I could keep large and small combined potions--but when applied to a Battle.net connection, would revert everything to either large or small combined potions. I wanted to be able to carry all three types if I wanted to, so no Battle.net for me.)

Between Diablo II--and its expansion, Lord of Destruction--and Diablo III came several intervening years that saw the development of World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and several other games from the folks at Blizzard. This--undeniably--influenced the art direction for Diablo III, and that was my single biggest complaint with the game.
Unfortunately, there are other complaints at this point, like the always-connected-to-the-internet angle, and even worse, the fact that there's no desire to replay after reaching endgame. The first is bad enough, but the second is going to cost Blizzard revenue, community good will, plus future sales of both the Diablo product, and new games or expansions they may come up with. The second is the death knell, frankly.

[Help] Firebomb: Because no one understands how a company with pisspoor customer service can be #1
[Help] Victory Bolt: To be honest... I have never gotten any good customer service from Blizzard when i played for a few years..I think that's where the bile comes from

Well, that's part of it, too. But hey, Second Life has abysmal customer service, too, and...oh. Right. Yeah, that's a really bad thing for a major company.

[Help] Calefact: Sometimes people come into this game expecting something like WoW, which can cause resentment in the vets

Isn't that the problem, though? Because I'm sure some did come in expecting a WoW-like environment. And that's exactly what they got.

But the bulk of Diablo fans wanted nothing like WoW. They wanted something like Diablo--dark, moody, dystopic, where the fighters, the mages, and the rogues were roughly equivalent in size, and only the boss mobs were larger, to enhance that sense of power.

What they got? HUGE men with brawny muscles, looking like overinflated bodybuilders; willowy, vacuous females; and insanely oversized, brightly colored monsters to fight. Yeah, that's WoW, not Diablo. And people protested.

[Help] Vibrobeast: it aint jealousy. they just dumbed their design philosophies to cater to the xbox live crowd
[Help] Wrath Talon: pls dont turn this game into WoW, i fled from WoW to here because it is casual
[Help] Vibrobeast: ...you don't know about the xbox live type of gamer do you? ...i live with one. :(
[Help] Vibrobeast: you DON'T want to play with them.

Is XBox the new AOL? I don't own an XBox, though I've watched a lot of the Achievement Hunter vids on their current crop of XBox Live games. Maybe it's just about open accessibility--at the risk of sounding elitist, maybe big MMOs and XBox Live have this in common: the fact that we don't have to be smart, polite, tolerant, respectful, compassionate or even stable to play games with other people. We just have to be breathing and have the time.

And I'm thinking since this one's running long, I'll stop it here and make a second half.

hard to find, blinded by sorrow

Have friends who want to support Gala Phoenix, but they don't play in SL (or perhaps their accounts lapsed)? It's okay--Gala's set up a legal fund request on IndieGogo.

IndieGogo, like Rockethub and Kickstarter before it, works on the principle of crowdfunding--the contributions of the many can be smaller if we all join together to make something happen. Rockethub is more for professional or scientific funds, Kickstarter is more entertainment-based...IndieGogo sort of straddles both camps. It's not as well known as Kickstarter, especially, but it has strong ties to development capitol, and investment sources.

This campaign has a lower goal--$10,000 (US), which is half of what she needs to begin the court case. Why? Because the One Voice event has already raised the other half:

Fortunately, many amazing and generous content creators, designers, and supporters have come together to hold a fundraiser in-world. In the first few days, we have already raised over $10,000, and I expect we will raise more before the event is over. However, many people have asked for a way to donate outside Second Life, so I have set up this page. Because of the success of the in-world fundraiser, I am keeping the goal of this campaign more moderate.


The Second Life content creator community will not be intimidated by bullies abusing a system that should protect us. Please stand with me.

Help if you can.

our safe hearts feeling dangerous; missing truth frozen in lies

Lucie Bluebird put up an expressive post on why One Voice is so important. I'd recommend you check it out.

The Dani 4G blog has more pictures, and a SLUrl to the One Voice event itself.

Why you should support One Voice: forget about Gala for the moment. Yes, the fundraiser's for her legal fees, but seriously, set her aside for right now. The issue is much larger, and much more serious, than just one designer.

Why? Because Gala Phoenix did what we're told we're supposed to do: when we suspect copyright tampering, or IP infringement, we're told to file a DMCA. Because that's the first step, right? Filling it out completely and accurately is how we solve things.

Only...that didn't work in this case. Hush Darkrose--who's been in trouble regarding copyright before, and who's currently lifted digital items from more than just Curio--filed a counter-DMCA, then filed for copyright on her skins, then wrote the malicious blog post which started all this off...ultimately, which severed Gala's ability to keep creating--while still being forced to pay tier to the Lindens for a sim from which she cannot make sales, nor currently access.

And Hush turned in a document from a country where the Lindens don't know the legal structure; even though all claims of legal action on copyright infringement (we're not talking DMCA filings here, we're talking actual court cases) must, by the Lindens' own Terms of Service, be filed (or at least, co-filed concurrently) in San Francisco, California; they received a notice which looked like a court case had been decided in Hush's favor. From Canada.

What did the Lindens do? Again, they did what their Terms of Service told them they must: they banned Gala (temporarily, at least) from the grid, and shunted everything else over to Legal. (Though the last I'd heard, the Lab had fired their chief legal counsel, so do they even have a legal department at this point?)

And that's where we sit. For Gala to get the right to sell her skins again in Second Life, she has to file a court case against an insane woman. Someone who's clearly delusional, or she wouldn't be pressing this so hard. And she has to file it in Canada, which involves at the very least finding a legal team in Canada to represent her, up to going there herself to testify.

That $20,000 figure you're hearing being tossed around--that's not the total. That's the low end. As in, it's going to cost at least twenty thousand, US, to file the report, retain counsel and pay legal fees--and none of that includes travel fees, lodging, food, making copies of her digital proofs, and contacting witnesses. With potentially their travel fees, lodging, food, and any counsel they may feel they need.

And all of this must be paid before Gala can sell again, even though the original "Supreme Court" notice was just a notice of a claim made, not an actual court case that was decided in Hush's favor. Because so far, nothing has been decided in Hush's favor.

And all of this has to be paid while Gala's not receiving a dime from sales in her sim (because it's still closed) or on the Marketplace (because she's still banned from selling there). And her biggest source of income? Second Life.

So here's the thing: put any other designer in Gala's place; it's still scary. This is proof positive than any malicious, jealous soul can stop the process that helps feed us, clothe us, and keep us sheltered from the storm--literally, because if we rely on what we make in Second Life to pay rent, to pay hospital bills, to put food on the table, to pay utility bills...then all of that can go away with one action from the Lindens.

It happened to Azriel Demain. It's happened to Solange Cerveau. It's happened to Maxwell Graf. It's happening to Gala. And it could happen to anyone.

This is not just a fundraiser for Gala Phoenix. It's a banding together of every creator, even those not participating. Because every creator lives under this threat. Every creator could have their life and livelihoods stripped away with a single act.

Unless, y'know, you're actually Hush Darkrose. Then you're just another online predator.

just how deep do you believe?

Hide the children--Hasbro's bringing Furbys back. Alas, I won't be able to get one--it's one of two absolute prohibitions my lady wife holds (it's actually the second, for those curious; the first is I'm no longer allowed to shave off my eyebrows). To be honest, if they all have the dye-drenched neon fur look, I don't want them anywhere near me.

Casper Warden wants a new "permissions tree" system to be incorporated into the SL viewer (and subsequently, third-party viewers after that). It's not the worst idea, reading through it, though I'm not entirely convinced it wouldn't just make which object has which permissions set more complicated for new players just starting out.

Warden's also proposing a server-side change to support this, which--if it works on the ground as it seems to in theory--would free up both client-side and server-side assets to improve processing times. We'll see what the Lindens have to say later on; in the meantime, the usual codicils apply (WATCH, don't vote; voting does nothing, nothing at all, don't even look at the vote button, just hit WATCH instead).

[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: ZENA WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU ALL PRETEND FAKE LIFE

Okay. Putting aside the name, which is ridiculous beyond all reason, here's what you need to know if you've never played City of Heroes: conversations marked [Local] are taking place right around you; they're like local chat in SL.

Then come the various chat groups separated by circumstance--like the team you're on, the supergroup you're in (or the coalition of supergroups your group belongs to), or the big channels nearly everyone's subscribed to, like the [Looking for Group] channel, or the [Help] channel.

[Broadcast], on the other hand, is both smaller and wider. While it doesn't have as many people reading along as something like the [Help] channel, say, it's also the equivalent of shouting in SL, or talking on voice in voice-enabled sims--it goes out to everyone in that zone. It's not just those folks immediately around you; someone could be over a mile away and still be heard by talking on the [Broadcast] channel.

[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: ZENA SMELL BAD FAKE LIVES
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: ZENA KILL YOU ALL
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: STABSTABSTAB
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: LA LA LA LALALA LALALALALALALALA
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: GO LIVE IN REAL LIFE LIFE
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: NOW THAT YOU ALL DIE
[Broadcast] Zena Warrior PRINCE: HERE

It's notable that no one responded to this; I think people were silently encouraging "Zena Warrior PRINCE" to move on by not interacting. It must have worked, because this was the last I heard from him. I left half an hour past this, so he might have commented afterwards; but at that point, I was gone.

Here's the thing, though, and why I'm bringing this up: while there's been a great upswing in free accounts, there's been a lot of people making the transition to subscribing out of it. And for all that free-to-play gaming is an offered option, the developers want paying subscribers, and, moreover, the subscribers that currently exist still carry the game.

So why would any player come in and essentially say "Why are you being so dumb? Don't play this game! Go outside!" That's like walking into a theatre and yelling "Fire!" just because you wanted a seat in the front row.

There's a really weird issue happening since the last patch of Second Life. It's been mentioned over on the Modem World blog, and while I'm not experiencing it personally, that doesn't mean I won't in future, or that it won't become more widespread. There's a JIRA for it (there's a JIRA for everything, isn't there?), and if you want to see it fixed, then WATCH, don't vote. It's currently listed as a showstopper, though it hasn't been assigned a Linden to fix things yet.

Before anyone chimes in that this is not a big deal, I'd point out a few things:

• First, if this is related to the Marketplace debacle in any way, this shows a much wider section of database corruption than previously thought. This would indicate there are some very basic, very vicious flaws in the base code itself.
• Scond, when most people see their history attached to a different name, or to a different picture, they don't think "Huh, what a weird bug", they think "OMG, LL's been hacked!"
• Since Linden Lab has been hacked in the past--at least twice that we know of, both times involving credit card numbers and/or personally identifying details--it's a valid concern.

Finally, though I know this is morbid irony on parade, finding this made me cackle madly for a few moments. It seems one notable blogger of Hush Skins has suddenly seen the light and vowed to stop supporting Hush. Good, because the One Voice fundraiser starts today. (And I'll get you a proper SLUrl to the event when I get in next.)

you have burned your choice

Couple days back, I brought up the recent post Gala Phoenix made about the Curio/Hush Skins battle. On the Salome Says blog, Salome brought up a point I'd forgotten in all of this.

First, from the Curio announcement:

In May, right after she sent the takedown notice, Hush put up a blog post. In it, she accused me of copyright infringement and claimed that a court had "reviewed the evidence" and determined her claim was valid. She even included some language she took from the complaint, rewrote it, and made it sound like the court had granted her an injunction.

There is no injunction. No court has reviewed any evidence. Her blog post was complete fiction.

I'll say that again, because I want to be clear: there is no injunction against me. No court has reviewed any evidence. There has been no court decision against me. I am not guilty of copyright infringement. Hush's blog post was not true. My skins are only offline because of the way the DMCA works.

Now, let's jump to Salome's post:

3. On May 25th, Gwen Carillon (founder of the Content Creator’s Association) made a post on SLU, claiming:

"First: I have seen the court docs in question. They are real. Hush has been transparent in all her dealings.

"Second: This is not a DMCA. This is a Supreme Court Injunction directing Linden Lab to remove infringing content. The docs are not what those in US are familiar with since this was issued from Canada. The word "wilful" might have been a typo, or it may be an alternate spelling. The injunction is the result of copyright registration shown and evidence submitted to the court. This was a court order, not a DMCA take down."

Despite the attempts of others to get more information, Gwen Carillon has remained publicly silent since her single posting on this issue.

So I went back to the SLU thread in the first place, and new information has come to light, which makes all of this even more confusing.

First, we now have the copyright claim from the Canadian Copyright Register (I'd amend a warning; while I'm linking it, it does contain RL information. I'm also linking to the original SLU post that contained this link, because sometimes, clicking the above doesn't take readers directly to the right section). This is not a Supreme Court injunction, which originally made me mad enough to make several inflammatory comments in this entry...

...which I then erased when I found this (similar warning; this is a legal document and as such contains RL information). So, at this point:

• Miss Carillon made her original comment on SLU on the 25th of May.
• The complaint mentions an original complaint (which means not the letter's own complaint, but other paperwork) was filed May 15th.
• The complaint begins IN THE SUPREME COURT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Thus, even though it's just a notice that the claim has been made, and no specific presentation of findings--for either side--has occurred (and by that I mean in a court room, in front of a judge, with barristers and clerks), I believe Miss Carillon thought she knew what she was seeing. If Hush Darkrose is a personal friend past that, that would make it even easier for her to believe that the initial claim was actually a decided court case. We are always more willing to believe our friends, over the wider world...

Especially if that's what Darkrose told her it was.

How'ver, there's one thing which is still deeply puzzling me. From the official civil claim filing:

Part 2: RELIEF SOUGHT
1. The Plaintiff claims as follows:


(e) An interim, interlocutory and permanent injunction restraining the Defendant from infringing the Plaintiff's copyright and moral rights in the Works;

(f) A wide injunction restraining the Defendant from infringing the Plaintiff’s copyright and moral rights in any works or other subject matter in which the Plaintiff now, or in future, may own copyright or may have an interest in copyright by licence;

Now, again, I am not a lawyer, but from everything I've been able to verify, there is no claim state in Canada where an interim, interlocutory and a permanent injunction can be claimed at once.

I'm going to repeat that, because it sounds vaguely important: from everything I've been able to track down, these are three separate legal states. As far as I know, one is issued before the trial, one is issued only by Parliamentary action, and one is issued after the trial has successfully concluded. These three injunction states cannot coexist.

So...this either means my research is wrong (I'll grant the possibility, being as I am not a lawyer nor live in Canada); or the entire document is claiming those three states as a potential outcome for the trial (which has not yet occurred). Normally, I'd add a third potential (that the entire civil claim document might be fake), but if it was found on a search for the original copyright registration, then it shouldn't be a falsified document.

Unless this entire issue is even more arcane than we know.

There's a huge rundown of all the links to date on LeeHere Absent's blog, which--if anyone isn't up to speed yet on what went down--will go a long way towards informing folks of what's happening. I'll update when I have more news.

but I'm still talking and you're not listening

There's a new update from Gala Phoenix, which I think is worth quoting in full:

Thursday, July 5th, 2012
To my loyal customers, friends, and supporters,


I wrote to you last month to thank you so much for all of your support during this very frustrating time. It means so much to me, and has sustained me more than I can say. However, as time has gone on with little explanation from me, you’ve had more questions, and that is understandable. I’d like to tell you what I’ve been going through, and ask you again for your support.


In March, I realized that Hush Darkrose was selling skins that looked very similar to mine. I often have to deal with skins that look a little too similar to mine; it’s part of protecting my copyright. I filed a DMCA takedown notice, but when Hush filed a counter-­notice, I didn’t do anything.


In April, Hush registered copyright of her skins in Canada. In May, she filed a copyright infringement complaint in a Canadian court against me, and then filed a DMCA takedown notice with Linden Labs. She also sent LL the notice of court action (the complaint).

Now, I am not a copyright lawyer, but I do know that if Gala Phoenix can prove she is the established owner of her skins before the date of Darkrose's filing, she's still legally in the clear. (Save for the hassle of filing, court and lawyer fees, and the strain of travel to testify, if necessary.) At any rate, she hasn't filed yet:

Most of us only know a little bit about the DMCA. We know how the takedown and counter-­notice procedures work. What I didn’t know was that if the person who filed a takedown notice sends Linden Labs a notice of court action, you can’t continue to sell your content, even if you send a counter-­notice. This is why I got temporarily banned at the beginning of June: I left my skins up for sale after the counter-­notice, not realizing there was a problem.


In May, right after she sent the takedown notice, Hush put up a blog post. In it, she accused me of copyright infringement and claimed that a court had “reviewed the evidence” and determined her claim was valid. She even included some language she took from the complaint, rewrote it, and made it sound like the court had granted her an injunction.


There is no injunction. No court has reviewed any evidence. Her blog post was complete fiction.


I’ll say that again, because I want to be clear: there is no injunction against me. No court has reviewed any evidence. There has been no court decision against me. I am not guilty of copyright infringement. Hush’s blog post was not true. My skins are only offline because of the way the DMCA works.


Because there is already a case in court, I will probably have to go to court to clear my name and get my business back. Copyright litigation is very expensive, though. Just a small copyright case like this costs around $20,000 to see through, and most of that is court fees, which can’t be waived even if I found an attorney in Canada who’d take the case pro bono (I have an attorney here in America).


Curio is my primary source of income, and without it, I’m barely able to get by, much less afford $20,000 for a court case in another country. However, Curio is also a labor of love, and I will not just sit back and let a competitor’s lies and malice rob me of it.


From July 9 – July 16, 2012, a number of extremely generous content creators will be holding a fundraiser in-­world at Truth District on my behalf. I cannot express the depth of my gratitude for them, and for any SLers who come out and donate to my fight. I will also be putting up an IndieGoGo campaign to raise some money.


I know I’m asking a lot. $20,000 is a massive amount of money. But even a little bit helps, and maybe we can stand up against someone who is abusing a system that is supposed to protect us all.


Gala

Now, as she mentioned, there is a fundraiser planned:

As many of you may be aware, Gala Phoenix is currently in the midst of legal issues which have resulted in her content being removed from the grid and her major source of income lost pending their outcome. She is facing serious expenses in securing representation and taking her case to court, and the issues she’s dealing with regarding intellectual property rights should concern anyone who makes a living from SL content creation; Gala’s situation is one that any creator of original content could have the misfortune to find themselves in.


The object of this fundraiser is not only to assist Gala Phoenix but to show that the SL content creation community is stronger standing together; the event is planned for, tentatively, the second week of July (9-15 July), dates and length subject to change. Participating content creators will be offered the option of a 50% sales split or 100% donation on sales, at their discretion; if you want to create an event-exclusive item or time a new release for the event, that’s great. Venue and fine details remain to be worked out, but I’d like to thank you for your participation–and please, if you happen to have any friends or acquaintances you think may be interested in participating, pass the word along.

At this point, I think it's undeniably clear who's at fault here, and it's not Gala Phoenix. What is still puzzling me is why Hush Darkrose is pushing her case. Registering copyright, while far less expensive than full court fees, is still not a small sum of change, and why would anyone go through all that trouble to copyright stolen goods? Plus, pushing it to the point of court fees means that she's still going to be paying roughly the same amount as Gala, just to defend a losing case. It's insane.

I am proud and humbled by the quiet upswell of support for Ms. Phoenix, however, and very proud to hear of the fundraiser. Several well-known makers in SL have already pledged to support this cause, which is fantastic to hear. I'll post more when I know more.

(Note: My usual rules apply for comments on this post--if it comes in anonymous, there's a chance that it will be held up until I physically access this page and publish things; this is not me denying anyone's "free speech" or simply deleting things. Generally, the only comments I delete are ones that are simply advertising other services, not actual commentary on the topics under discussion.)

life is cold here, empty hallowed ground

Jean Grey is coming back, apparently. I'm just baffled. Marvel, seriously, just let the poor woman die. She's done enough. You're just bringing her back for dramadramadrama anyway. Leave her alone.

And I may have found the worst anime ever made. Or at least the most baffling: in twenty minutes, one character is named, and we're only quasi-sure that the guy we're seeing is that character. And that's not even the largest question of this piece. There are other, bigger questions, like:

• why are all the police girls? And twelve?
• why are all the twelve-year-old girls in form-fitting plugsuits?
• do they have names?
• why was one of them--after being beheaded--brought to the hospital where resuscitation was performed?
• actually, let's go back to that question again--how was resuscitation performed?!?

And that's without going into the scary bondage (and internal-organ-removing) process required to get into the big alien suit in the first place by the one named character.

We move on...to SCIENCE! Seriously, that's one of the greatest explanation of the Higgs-Bosun particle--and the CERN scientists' work in general--that I've ever found. (Though I'm going to be amused for a long while that the biggest protests around the announcement of finding the particle were over the Comic Sans font used in the official presentation.)

There's a really odd JIRA involving Microsoft SkyDrive and SL crashes; I don't entirely understand all of it, because I don't use SkyDrive, but it sounds serious. Nalates Urriah goes into it a little bit more here, along with some other concerns that are SkyDrive-specific, and nothing to do with SL in general.

I would tend to agree that Agnes Richter's embroidered straightjacket should be considered a repurposed diary, not a textile art object. While there is textile art in the world, she wasn't trying to make art as much as she was trying to explain her experience, using the tools she had on hand. Nevertheless, it remains an amazing testament to the power of creativity in captivity, and there's a new book on the subject, too.

Remember the breedable Twisted hunt cubes, the last hunt back? They now exist RL. BE AFRAID.

Finally, this is weird, surreal, suitably bizarre and a whole lot of fun. It's a ska version of "Still Alive", the Coulton song from the end of the first Portal game. Starts off slow, then starts jumping off the walls. If you like ska, you need to hear it at least once.

the one you can't repair

So, clear back in February, I analyzed a "magic-based" bit of spam that hit the blog. I figured, okay, weird, oddity, but it didn't happen again, so I went on with things.

And then...I got another one.

MY NAME IS Sharon Anderson FROM HOUSTON, TEXAS.

OMG STOP SHOUTING AT ME. Dear gods, lady. Lower the dosage.

I NEVER BELIEVED IN LOVE SPELLS OR MAGIC UNTIL I MET THIS SPELL CASTER ONCE WHEN I WENT TO AFRICA IN JANUARY LAST YEAR ON A BUSINESS SUMMIT.

Also, it might be an idea to use a couple commas, here and there.

HE IS REALLY POWERFUL AND COULD HELP CAST SPELLS TO BRING BACK ONE'S GONE, LOST, MISBEHAVING LOVER AND MAGIC MONEY SPELL OR SPELL FOR A GOOD JOB.

Okay, still trying to parse this...Really powerful magic guy, check; will help to bring back the "misbehaving" lover, check (though it always confuses me why people seem to want "misbehaving" lovers back...); apparently, he can also bring back people who get lost? Or who just left, period...or, wait, did you mean "dead" again, for gone?

Ew.

I'M NOW HAPPY & A LIVING TESTIMONY COS THE MAN I HAD WANTED TO MARRY LEFT ME 2 WEEKS BEFORE OUR WEDDING AND MY LIFE WAS UPSIDE DOWN COS OUR RELATIONSHIP HAS BEEN ON FOR 2YEARS...

Still not happy with the shouting, but errr. You lived with a man for two years and he left you two weeks before the wedding? What the hell did you do?

I REALLY LOVED HIM, BUT HIS MOTHER WAS AGAINST US AND HE HAD NO GOOD PAYING JOB.

Then, frankly, good riddance. Tell him he can come back to you when he gets employed. Move on with your life.

SO WHEN I MET THIS SPELL CASTER, I TOLD HIM WHAT HAPPENED AND EXPLAINED THE SITUATION OF THINGS TO HIM..AT FIRST I WAS UNDECIDED, SKEPTICAL AND DOUBTFUL, BUT I JUST GAVE IT A TRY.

Um...good for you? I guess?

AND IN 7 DAYS WHEN I RETURNED TO TEXAS, MY BOYFRIEND(NOW HUSBAND) CALLED ME BY HIMSELF AND CAME TO ME APOLOGIZING THAT EVERYTHING HAD BEEN SETTLED WITH HIS MOM AND FAMILY AND HE GOT A NEW JOB INTERVIEW SO WE SHOULD GET MARRIED

Gosh. Happy everything worked out.

And you're still shouting.

Now, the weird part of this, for a spam thing? What's missing from this all-caps nightmare thing?

Yeah. This is pretty much just "hey, trust this guy, he worked wonders for me..." without ever ONCE giving out an email address, website, or even the man's name.

What the hell, people?

Oh, and of note, for that sense of full morbid irony: I found another mention of this person, that led me to another address entirely. Seems our Miss "Sharon" goes to a university in Nigeria. And his name is David.

Why do people send me these things??

I can see myself, I look peaceful and pale, but underneath I can barely inhale

There's a very simple three-picture post on the Hush/Curio debate, and...barring the next bout of evidentiary mud-slinging...that pretty much cinches it for me. There's a better point-by-point definition on Salome's blog, which goes into very explicit detail. As I've already said, I do have a bias, but it's difficult to remain even partially objective towards Hush Skins--and their creator--at this point.

I think as both of us are trying to remain as objective as we can, neither of us can say with total surety that Hush is at fault. But the evidence is pretty clearly leading in that direction. In short, it looks very, very bad.

There is apparently heat landing on Ms. Phoenix for staying quiet during this debacle--I'd point readers towards the second comment here as being representative of the how and why of the Phoenix-directed ire--but at this point, evidence, while piling up, is still largely circumstantial. No one says a designer of any stripe has to step up and answer--particularly if they're hanging back to build their legal defense against potentially improper and spurious legislation.

So, Issue 23 has now launched in City of Heroes, and the one thing that seems to be puzzling most of us is not the unstable nature of the new zones and transport tunnels, nor the added new high-level content, nor even the chainmail and leather armor sets which all VIP subscribers got for free--but instead, the aging of a teen character...which strikes a lot of us as odd.

We're talking specifically about Penelope Yin, who used to look like this:

(from the media album)

when she lived in Faultline. She was a young teen psychic who had the mysterious ability to communicate mind to "mind" with the self-motivating Clockwork. Many of us  got used to her running around in her softball uniform and camo pants, trying to save her father...over and over and over again. (Oh, the tragic fate of NPCs.)

Now she looks like this:

(from the media album)

So there is--understandably, I think--a bit of confusion. Partially because as far as we all knew, she was maybe fourteen or fifteen, and now she looks twenty-three to twenty-five, easy, and--how does that work? Was she enspelled? Did her psychic whahoosiwhasits metaphysically age her up? And what the hell is up with her outfit??

I'm serious about the outfit thing. Most of us would accept the bared midriff with bare legs, or accept the braced midsection bit if it had an under-layer of white spandex to match the white tights. As it is, especially with the chrome muttonchops:

(from the media album)

no-longer-young Miss Penelope looks really, really odd.

Also, the end is nigh. It's been good knowing all of you. See you after the zombie apocalypse!

live alone, eat your cake

Seen in passing on a profile:

The Online Axioms

1. People will be – Exactly where they wish to be.
2. No one comes online to be alone.
3. Online offers a billion ways to lie. And ways to be more than one place at once.
4. Very few people know their own motivations totally. And therefore, can't be trusted to be able to state them.
5. Online friends can last years, lovers--maybe months.
6. SL can also be the begining of a nightmare, the destruction of the real things...Use with extreme caution

Overall, it's good advice.

[01:24] Ⓓⓡⓐⓖⓞⓝⓘⓐ [Dxxxxxxx Dxxxxx]: lol

*facepalms* I give up. There's no hope for the future.

Speaking of hope for the future, on the one hand, I'm happy the books--and especially the music--are inspiring people, but on the other, there are a lot better things than to name your children after teens who died violently in a death match. I'm not sure Suzanne Collins would be in favor or not.

Over in Minecraft lands, things are getting very odd. That's not a glitch, per se--that's a flipped skin someone came up with so it looks upside-down.

Apparently it's very disturbing to watch when it walks--because yes, the "head" splits in half.

For this next bit, I'm deliberately stepping away from my usual obscure-the-names policy. Here goes:

[16:39] Aleia [AleiaSerenity Sapphire]: WARNING!!!!!!! GIFT CARD SCAM!!
Sun, Apr 15 2012 4:38:55 PM PDT

We don't know for sure all the specifics but fellow member Pixie Sparrowtree had her Lindens cleaned out by a gift card she wore. She said she said no to the take lindens request. The card says Win bonus Lindens L$1.000 to L$ 5.000 on it. Be on the lookout. It drained her money before she could even detach it.

So that's Aleia reporting, about her friend Pixie, who was harmed by an unknown someone. I had plans to IM Pixie and see if this was legit, but when I pulled her profile, this was part of her bio:

I onwy 2 years old n its a biiiig werld owt der. And one day i finded dis wady and now hers mines mummy and a sissy and i habs a me a fowebber familwy.. dat wubs me fowebber no matter wuts and also dems da bestest in awl sl .We awl builders n makers n wots of busy come see our us

Got it. Don't want to talk to YOU, then.

So we move on to the next group:

[16:39] Talaitha: [16:24] Vivian Firethorn (vivian.shadowcry): warning to all people ... there is a woman out there who is handing out GIFT CARDS DO NOT WEAR IT DO NOT ACCEPT IT if you do your accounts wil be cleaned out like mine just was PLZ PLZ PLZ dont accept her stuff the name is Jɛռɨʄʄɛʀ (mary19.nansen) this was from a store owner!

So this is Talitha reporting what Vivian said about Mary19, relayed by an unnamed store owner. Just for reference, Mary19 is Portuguese, if that matters. No real way to IM her and ask without pulling out a translation program, and I'm just not up for that this afternoon.

On to the next group:

[16:47] katlin18k Michigan: warning!!!!!!
Sun, Apr 15 2012 4:41:59 PM PDT

Solarayne Exonar (solarayne): : warning to all people ... there is a woman out there who is handing out GIFT CARDS DO NOT WEAR IT DO NOT ACCEPT IT if you do your accounts wil be cleaned out like mine just was PLZ PLZ PLZ dont accept her stuff the name is Jɛռɨʄʄɛʀ (mary19.nansen)
EVERYONE PLEASE BE CAREFUL

This is katlin18k reporting what Solarayne said in her report against Mary19.

From the last group:

[16:48] Emilly Orr is getting SO damned tired of seeing this.
[16:48] Jo Querrien: I've heard that warning in 3 different groups in the last ten minutes......but it was a different person each time, and a different card handed out...
[16:48] ™ šÃקקђ ™ [Sapphire Hotaling]: Well, this is the third time with the same person handing out the gift card that i've heard of
[16:48] Jo Querrien: in fact, in one of them, the Jeniffer written that way was the reputed person whose account was cleared out
[16:48] ™ šÃקקђ ™ [Sapphire Hotaling]: And, it's really happening. My guess is, this person is using several alts

So, whether it's "really happening" or not, as usual, the fear of the scam goes wider than the original scam--IF there was one--did.

[16:50] Jo Querrien: It bothers me that in one report "Jeniffer" with weird writing was the victim, and in another, that same text is the perpetrator...
[16:50] Lorac Farella: yes..she was at my sim.and was ared by the person she gave to...twice

Yeah. That bugs me too.

Essentially, this bit of "urgent info" is hitting a ton of different groups, to the point that the original warning is being diluted in all the hash. I'd give the usual caveats to be careful, and so forth, but seriously, it sounds like a chain letter at this point--IM five groups about this or you will LOSE ALL YOUR SILKS, or something. It's bizarre.

[Later insert from the Editrix, with this variant:

[18:00] Siss Criss: ok... don't know how this would work, but it's better to be safe than sorry. From another group chat: "warning to all people ... there is a woman out there who is handing out GIFT CARDS DO NOT WEAR IT DO NOT ACCEPT IT if you do your accounts wil be cleaned out like mine just was PLZ PLZ PLZ dont accept her stuff the name is Jɛռɨʄʄɛʀ (mary19.nansen) PASS IT ON PHISHING SHOULD BE A CRIME\"
[18:00] Antoinette Lioncourt: i was just abot to paste same message
[18:00] Raynea Andel: ...

[So it's STILL going around, two hours later. At this point, worry less about being careful around gift cards, and worry more over whether or not you're passing on bad information.]

And remember, with some things, there is no end to the possibilities.

don't let the wolves in, pretty girls

If you ever really wanted to be a space marine...but found yourself just a wee too feline and girly for the big huge testosterone-ridden Space Marine Corps...now there's hope.

If you can call that hope.

(And also found in poking about the Marketplace--if you ever, for whatever crack-headed reason, want a badly misspelled tattoo--I've found one. You can thank me later.)

And in other tattoo-related news, scanning through the broken stuph on the Marketplace also led me to Blood Ink, and the fact that they have Nazi tattoos. In fact, because of the seeming prevalence of their swastika work, I went through their store. They list two hundred and eighty-six items on the Marketplace. Of those, over one hundred of them are patent copyright violations, and five are directly related to Nazi or SS symbology.

Do I even have to bring up the fact that neither of those are supposed to exist on SL according to the Linden rules? But then, I forget. The Lindens are currently ignoring their own rules and griefing the Marketplace on their own. Fun times.

WE MOVE ON.

[Oxxxxxx Sxxxxxxx]: this is a twisted service announcement: be careful when unboxing. Contents may be fluffy. It is important to keep the clawed end away from you at all times when unboxing. Thank you and happy hunting!

And back into the JIRA chaos, this time with brief breaks for tea and kittens.

We lead off with Angus Mesmer:

When I check an online shop, as I type this:
-Some listing have wrong names and creators, while the image is that of the product that is supposed to be sold in the shop.
>>1) clicking the Image and Name will send me back to the Marketplace homepage. Clicking the name of the creator sends me to what might be their actual shop, but is empty/does not contain the item whose name appears on the erroneous listing.
>>2) Clicking the Image and Name will send me to the listing, the image is that of the proper item, but the description corresponds to the item whose name appears on the listing. The "Visit Shop" link sends you to the shop owned by the person making the item whose name appears on the listing.

In those cases, the price is that of the wrong items.

The broken listings do not respect the General/Moderate/Adult ratings at all. Which I consider very bad. I am probably not the only person in this case. One of the wrong names was for a sex sofa. While using a General browsing rating.

Which I thought was one of the things the ratings system, and the fruitlessly arcane and ever-changing banned words list, was supposed to prevent.

Emmas Twin is the first to report the now-constant stream of complaint notecards from customers:

I have the same issue, I logged into game today only to receive a rather nasty im from someone accusing me of stealing her pictures with malicious intent and a threat to report me. After which I checked my listings and found this problem not only on this account but on my other account too and have had to remove all my listings. So annoyed, more for the fact I am receiving ims from irate merchants claiming I'm stealing their products.

As I mentioned earlier, those residents who don't read the forums, keep an eye on the status update, or are members of SL Universe aren't going to know what's going on, and their first instinct is likely going to be as Miss Twin mentioned: threaten first, figure it out later. This is going to cause a needless amount of stress--in fact, it already has--which could have easily been avoided with more testing, better coding, and taking the time to full integrate something before rushing on to the next shiny toy.

Because keep in mind, the Marketplace has been functionally broken for months, and instead of fixing those problems, the Lindens decided they wanted all new ones. Why? Still think I'm on target with the Lindens trying to drive us all away, so they can sell a mostly empty world to some bigger (or vastly smaller and clueless) firm, so that the problems of SL won't matter to the Lindens anymore. Because they'll have their money, and be long gone.

The d'awww of Scottish folding.

Moriko Inshan again:

I have again, for the third day in a row, checked every single of my MP listings. All appear fine, but as we have learned, that does not mean that my images, or products do not appear in a fellow merchant's store. I have not migrated to DD, and do not intend to do so until these very serious issues are resolved. The cut off date for Magic Boxes needs to be moved out from the May deadline by a few months are the very least. Personally, I do not feel it is safe to do any changes to any of my Marketplace listings while everything is in such a mess.

And if the Lindens won't shut down the Marketplace, you can always choose to employ Ms. Inshan's option, which is also making the rounds--telling your personal group not to shop on Marketplace, and telling your subscription customers the same. Which will, slowly but effectively, filter out until Marketplace will be viewed with dread and mistrust for simply existing.

This is also nothing the Lindens want. So why aren't they stepping in and being proactive about this, instead of standing around with the blinds drawn, and pretending everything's just peachy?

jouet Jestyr:

This matter is being handled very poorly by LL. If a commerce site like Amazon had this issue, they'd take the site offline until it was fixed.

The advice given by the commerce team doesnt work.

Close it down and fix it, please.

There's not a thing wrong with her comment. Any of the bigger services, who would stand to lose far more money, would close down their database in a heartbeat if something like this happened to them. The Lindens? Give out worthless advice to premium customers (thereby angering them further), refuse to do anything but tell us "We're on it" like a useless parrot nailed to his cage bar, and still never fixed the problems that people were screaming about before this, thereby breaking Marketplace in just about every way possible, save for a malformed internet address.

And I'm sure they're working on that, too.

The Chesterfield Hotel afternoon tea service.

hoohaa Anaconda:

I have spent the past few hours searching deep into the marketplace and what I am finding is beyond belief I have come across a few stores that have around 90+ products where not just 1 or 2 items are affected but every single item is affected there are literally 90 different creators listed in one store. Follow the Store links that aren’t supposed to be there and you will find an almost spider web effect of complete destruction. This has got to be fixed ASAP

But it won't be. I think we all understand this at this point.

customesculpties Leider:

This is the biggest mess ive seen in sl history

I think I can say the same, and that counts the OpenSpace debacle, the entirety of Ursula/Zindra, the ageplay explosion, and I'll even throw in replicating griefing objects and the "grey goo" attacks of 2006.

CouldBe Yue chimes in:

yay me, I only have one listing that has been screwed.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Satiated-Desires-Bondage-Pleasure/1419569 [The original item--Editrix] and this https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/P3-Let-It-Snow-Gold-PROMO-Priced/1411527 [The remapped picture over the text and title of a General-rated holiday dress in gold]

I'm sure the owner of the second listing is thrilled to pieces to have the item now rated adult and I'm not particularly happy that my adult item is now rated general.

You wouldn't think that LL would have ignored this for so long but apparently they're made of sterner stuff. I'm laying bets that everyone working on the marketplace has gone home for the weekend, stroking themselves over a job well done.

[edit to add more information] I tried to update my listing by replacing the picture, updating the maturity rating and unpacking info (the only things that I could see had changed.. well apart from all the relevance details - grrrr). When I submitted, I got this error

1 error prohibited this Product from being saved

There were problems with the following fields:

The Xstreet product ID '1325134' already exists. Please provide a unique Xstreet product ID.

Which you may remember from the XSL migration.

It did however replace the picture but hasn't updated the rest of the details (ie, it's still stuck in the general maturity rating, with the wrong unpacking details, maturity rating and relevance details).

Oh, indeed, lots of fun there.

Kitten and bunny!

Maxx Farella:

Before direct delivery became active my partner noticed in her top selling products screen that she had other merchants items in there. But her actual store listings were all correct at that time. As direct delivery became active I converted my items about 8 at a time and the process seemed to go very smoothly for me (to my surprise lol). I checked my listings after doing so and all seemed to be good so I now have removed all my magic boxes from in world. It was only a few days later as I checked through my store that I noticed the listings getting mixed up with other merchants items.

I am unable to edit or fix some of these items as they appear to be broken. I have replaced some of the wrong textures on my product so they are not showing some one else picture but I'm reluctant to mess too much with it as I am unsure what Linden labs are doing to resolve this issue.

It doesn't appear that they are treating this problem with much urgency unfortunately. The only fix I see they did do in the last maintenance was to fix the review count/ratings.

And I'm hearing this more and more often, now--that this isn't a new problem, it just wasn't affecting everyone yet. Now it is.

Gael Streeter:

We can not fix all the errors manually! This is technically impossible because some are not manually correctable!

And to reinforce why this is so shockingly bad, that's because this is what the commerce team is telling people to do, which means not only are they giving out wrong advice, but they're not even bothering on callbacks to change their tune. No one on Concierge that I've heard of has bothered to learn anything else about this issue.

The Duck & Bunny traditional tea service. (The entire post is worth reading, though.)

Sen Pixie:

I updated to DD, checked all my listings (which had all imported correctly), removed the MB items from the website, and promptly deleted my box. I followed the steps to the letter from the LL produced Youtube video. I then rechecked all my listings and all were fine.

Three days later, out of my 70 listings, I ended up with 20 that had incorrect images, 5 became unlisted, and 2 had items associated from other makers, placing those items in their store as well.

About 12 of those products with incorrect images were old enough that I only had *.bmp files on my HDD, adding another couple hours of work to an already time consuming "fix."

LL, I'm a programmer, I know things go wrong. However, to leave the MP up and running while such an egregious problem goes on is not only irresponsible, but opens you up to possible liability issues as you may be knowingly allowing IP rights violations to continue after you were the original cause.

Let's talk about that again, since it really does seem that the Lindens are wholly blind to this point.

Who knows who's actually coding, but let's just make a name up for the fun of it--say "Bukkit Linden" is the chief of Marketplace programming. He and his team have been working tirelessly to break Marketplace in every way possible, in between practicing their evil laughs in large, echoing underground chambers (before walking outside for a brisk stroll to find puppies to kick and babies to light on fire). One of their most inspired hacks to their own software resulted in copiable items being delivered multiple times.

Sleepy kitten.

Ph3ARMeeImmaHackzorz Resident went to the Marketplace, and ordered one item, a dress with custom shading and textures, as a gift for the girlfriend he hopes to get by showing her a picture of his bedroom and the large tub of pudding on the nightstand. It delivers to him. Then delivers again. Then delivers again. Then delivers again.

The next morning, he now has twenty-five copies of this dress. They're all transferable, even though the merchant's listing said no-transfer. Being stupid and evil-minded (a bad mix, to be sure), he coordinates with some of his hacker friends, and they tell him to join twenty-five freebie groups, and pass the dress out.

The dress proceeds to go the rounds. This wasn't someone acquiring this dress in an underhanded fashion. The Lindens gave out the dress. The Marketplace kept giving out the dress, resulting in multiple copies. And all it takes is one dishonest person...

Suddenly, SweetLilOne Shenandoah is seeing her dress everywhere. She tracks it down in groups. She tracks it down in freebie zones. Someone she's never even met is sitting in a welcome area just giving the dress out to everyone that walks within range.

Mismatched vintage china for an afternoon tea service (and all in truly excellent condition, besides).

How, at this point, does Ms. Shenandoah stop the copyright infringement? She can't get the dress back; it was a legal sale. She can't go after the hacker, because--even though he largely contributed to both the loss of her sales and her ensuing panic--he paid for one item, he got that one item, and it should have come with her originally set permissions intact.

But it didn't. Why didn't it? Because Bukkit and his team did everything wrong.

So who's she going to complain to? The Lindens? Like they care. The Linden legal department? Please, they laid off their law team. So who? Who is going to listen to her entirely valid concern, here?

My answer? No one. Not a single Linden. They're not even concerned.

Happy kitten!

I hope that helped as the ranting continued. More later. Have a nice day.

it's a ball held in the room of mirrors

This is (verbatim) the message I just received when porting around on the Twisted hunt:

Fata Boa's 'Greeter'
Greetings Emilly Orr, Welcome at Eternal Dream Poses! Please subscribe or group to stay tuned about our new releases! I WILL REMEMBER IT'S ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN TAKE SNAPSHOTS INTO THE STORE. THIS IS A STORE, NOT A PHOTOSTUDIO ;) Enjoy Your Stay!

Now, barring my instinctive (and admittedly) childish reaction of Screw you, I'll take pictures where I want...what's making my head tilt on a more rational level is the why behind this statement. Were people coming to her store just to snap pictures, and then leaving without buying things? Did she run into too many illicit late-night photoshoots? She grew tired of picking up torn Polaroids, scattered film canisters and a plethora of lacy underwear, none in her size?

Then, of course, I stepped forward two paces, and as things rezzed in, I realized I was facing a full-size, bleeding bosk carcass (and no, you can go there if you want to see, I snapped NO PHOTOS), so...maybe there is a good reason for her absolutely-no-photos-ever-this-means-YOU policy: she doesn't want to raise the wrath of PETA. (Because all the gods know, they've gotten offended over stupider things.)

In the meantime, the latest rage on SL is...well...full of rage:

[12:38] Kxxxxxx Sxxxxxxxxx: many beautiful little things cost!
[redacting evil "marketplac" link]
[12:39] Lxxxxx Hxxxxxxxx: Altervista... yeah... sure.
[12:39] Rxxxxx Cxxxxxxxx: don't click that...

So, this link went just about everywhere today. I don't think I've heard from a single person who didn't see this or hear about it.

[12:39] Cxxxxxx Mxxxxx: oh dear
[12:39] Bxxxxxxx Axxx: PHISHING!!
[12:39] Kxxxxxx Sxxxxxxxxx: -.-
[12:39] Mxxx Fxxxxxxxx: smh
[12:39] Emilly Orr: I am getting SO TIRED of seeing that damn link

It was the third time I'd seen it, and I'd only been in world an hour at that point.

[12:40] Sxxxxxx Sxxxx: if you open that DO NOT put in any information!
[12:40] Lxxx Dxxxxxxxx: read links before clicking... it says "marketplac."
[12:40] Jxxxxx Lxxxxx prudently does not click that.
[12:40] Axxxx Hxxxxx: yeah i opened it without reading it because i know the person, teaches me to read first
[12:40] Vxxxx Rxxxxxxx: I just logged on, and I already got it like 5 times
[12:41] Sxxxxx Sxxxxxxx: lola, maketplace has ".com" not ".org".....

With perception, and common sense, we can avoid these pitfalls; the problem is that many of us occasionally don't have any. (Myself certainly not excluded from the lack of common sense.)

[12:41] Hxxxxx Lxxxxx: record the name and log a complaint :)

And THERE is the big problem; because these aren't new accounts thrown up just to hassle people. These are established accounts who made the mistake of logging in to a link, giving out information they shouldn't have, and now their OWN accounts have been compromised as a result.

[12:41] Emilly Orr: I get the feeling SL accounts got hacked, because these aren't your usual "been in Sl two days" folks. Some are long-term residents of SL
[12:42] lxxxx Cxxxxxxx: victim after 4 years of being here?
[12:42] Exxxxxx Hxxxxx: ARed
[12:42] Axxxx Mxxxxxxx: I think they spam any groups they're in, maybe IM friends too
[12:42] Rxxxxx Cxxxxxxxx: They do.
[12:43] lxxxx Cxxxxxxx: yeah, you'd think she would know better than to click unknown links
[12:43] Ailsa Muliaina: lez, could have been someone that person trusted who sent the link..that makes it much easier to fall for :)
[12:43] Emilly Orr: So far, everyone I've seen today has been at least two years old, and many more. It's getting odd.

Now, soon after this, "the notecard" started being passed about, group to group. I think it's valid, so I'm reprinting it here, but--as per usual with these things--it went around so widely, in so many different directions, that soon people were getting tired of seeing it too!

Anyway, here's the text of the card:

PHISHING? NO, THANKS

So, what is "phishing"? It is just another way for scammers and other, say... "lazy people" to get your login data and, from that moment, take over your account and use it for their own benefit (usually, monetary, but also impersonating you... or even asking for it to be canceled after it!)

It consists in showing you a link to click (or creatively making it look like an official one - read more below,) very similar to the service you have an account in, usually offering discounts, bargains... and when you click them, they redirect you to a page that can even look the same as the login page (from Second Life, this time.)

So we feel safe, enter our login and password, and bam! We're busted. The scammer now has our login data, and they can very quickly log into the SL website, change our password, change the confirmation e-mail and, of course, log inworld, impersonate us, spend the money, use our credit card if we have associated payment info on file (or spend until the last of our L$ if we don't have this payment info...)

If we copy a link, paste it, and notice that the domain name does not finish in secondlife.com, we can be sure that the website is trying to get our login data.

So, an example:

http://secondlife.marketp.com/ <=== This for sure does NOT come from the official SL web: Don't trust it
http://id.secondlife.com/ <=== It finishes in secondlife.com: It comes from the official SL web

There are other ways for scammers to hide the real Internet address so we click in a link and then input our loging data.
The following page: http://www.arb.ca.gov/html/spoof/spot.htm explains some tips to recognize these attempts of phising.

IMPORTANT - The official link to login into our account via the web is very similar to the following (being the most important how it *begins*):

https://id.secondlife.com/openid/login?return_to=https%3A%2F%2Fsecondlife.com%2Fauth%2Foid_return.php%3Fredirect%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fsecondlife.com%252Findex.php&language=en-US

Notice how the link begins:

https://id.secondlife.com/

Here we can read:

https We're login through the Secure HTTP protocol
id.secondlife.com The domain name finishes in .secondlife.com

Read here about a recent case: http://shoppingcartdisco.com/gossip/phishing-scams-popping-up-in-second-life-are-you-next/
This can happen to any of us. It only takes a moment of tiredness to put our login data in the wrong place.

Please, share this notecard: protect yourself by being informed, and protect others by helping them in being informed.

Information is always our best defense against scams.

Take care all,

-- Auryn Beorn

[2012-03-08 12:48] Zxx Sxxxxx: did it automatically take your information or did you have to log in to something once you clicked the link?
[2012-03-08 12:48] Lxxx Rxxxxxx: log into something
[2012-03-08 12:48] Rxxxxx Cxxxxxxxx: I think you have to log in
[2012-03-08 12:48] Lxxx Rxxxxxx: a bogus marketplace site
[2012-03-08 12:48] Pxxxx Vxxxxx: I clicked the link it sent me to the MP and it was a blank page
[2012-03-08 12:49] Cxxxxxx Nxxxxx: Paige, you should change your password as soon as possible.

I can't disagree. May be overly paranoid, but if you did click the link, at the very least change your password. And make sure you change it to something you don't use everywhere else! Otherwise, just be careful out there.