Attention Sony USB Microvault owners

A few days ago I bought direct from Sony a 512Mb USB MicroVault stick. When I first put it into my USB port it claimed that it could compress data on the fly to make the capacity much greater, and asked me if I wanted to install the on-the-fly compressor/decompressor as part of the startup. Suspecting nothing, I agreed.

The next time I started Windows I got a Windows "Data Execution Prevention" warning saying that Windows Explorer had caused a DEP problem and would be closed. I acknowledged that, and the system seemed to work fine.

Until I went to start Second Life. Then I got the error above. For those whose monitors can't make out the dialogue box, it says "Second Life cannot be run from this machine. If you believe this to be an error, please contact support@secondlife.com"

The first thing I thought was that I'd been banned. So I went to the second life account page, and it said everything was in order. Next billing date, end of February, account status active. So I tried it on my laptop - and got in without a problem.

Reasoning that the DEP was the only thing to have changed in my configuration, I opened the startup group and deleted the Sony compression utility. Then I rebooted, and hey presto - no DEP. I tried Second Life again, and it worked fine.

So, to anyone who has recently bought, or may plan to buy, a Sony USB Microvault storage stick - take heed. You'll need to STOP the decompressor working at startup or you might find programs working unpredictably.

In a final footnote, before I took action myself, I did write to Second Life support to ask about this, and got an email back this morning saying they'd reviewed the situation and found that after I'd emailed them I had apparently connected without any problems (which is quite true) - so, an easy close ticket there. Can't help wondering if they'd have been so quick replying if I hadn't solved the problem!

From an illegitimate complaint to a legitimate complaint

It's interesting that this story should break just after I'd blogged about the Bragg vs Linden Labs issue. As I've already said, I believe the Bragg case is without merit; he broke the rules and he got caught. Case closed.

And now comes Furnation, who appear to have been quite deliberately targeted for victimisation. It's well known that groups that love to have something to sneer at or go for often target the "furry" community and this appears to be a carefully laid plan to do just that.

You can read the details at this posting: The Shady Side of Second Life but basically, somebody came forward pretending to be wanting to donate to the community, and donated fraudulently obtained funds. They then hacked into sim administrator accounts not just once, but TWICE, destroyed items and tried to irretrievably destroy sims and basically sabotage the entire community.

Now you'd expect Linden Labs to be very hot at tracking down the perpetrator and banning them (especially if they can hash identify hacker's computers) - surely they could work out who had hacked the accounts, and hash-ban them, then unfreeze all the furnation accounts they'd frozen to stop the fraudulent funds being distributed, right? And then restore all the funds but the fraudulent ones, which they would seize. That would be the proper way to handle it.

But no. They failed to deal with the compromised account - TWICE - and then first froze, then confiscated the ENTIRE funds of the sim owner. Legitimate questions the sim owner asked were either ignored or fobbed off with "We can't answer that, because doing so would compromise sensitive information".

Just as I have no hesitation in delivering a blog-slap to Bragg for wanting his access restored after purposefully and deliberately committing fraud, so I believe that Linden Labs have not delivered ANY degree of customer service to the Furnation community in this incident. The confiscation of all the managers assets has left the entire operation in virtual-financial difficulty, as some of the virtual funds was stored in banks and used to generate interest that in turn was used to fund the operation. Not to mention alienating over a thousand users (yes, this particular furry community is BIG) and jeapardising the future of 9 complete sims.

We're not talking about trivial amounts of real world cash here either. Consider this: 1,100 users of an active community, the bulk of whom came to Second Life as a side effect of already belonging to the community. Furry roleplayers demand detailed avatars, which has led to the establishment of a thriving community of builders and scripters (the average avatar goes for between 800 and 1300 Lindens) plus all that that entails, such as premium accounts and land ownership.

Now, if Furnation decide to pull out of Second Life, that presence WILL be felt. NINE full sims, costing $200 a month in rent alone - $1800 PER MONTH lost immediately. Let's say half the furry community have premium accounts (furries by and large don't do things by halves - if they dedicate to something, they go for it fully) so that's another $10 per account per month. 10 x 550 accounts = $5,500 per month. So without counting any extra money that might be used to buy the virtual currency, Linden Labs are putting on the line $6,300 per month by failing to offer support and help and by being heavy handed. I ask - does this make ANY financial sense, particularly given the fact that it should be possible to track down the user who perpetrated the entire vandalism and hash-ban them permanantly.

I have no doubt if a group message went out saying "Furnation is moving from Second Life - please support us by joining us on a rival system" the vast majority - 80% or more - would close their Second Life accounts within days.

Surely it's not asking too much of Linden Labs to give some quality support to a big customer?

Bragg vs Linden Labs et al

If there's one thing that would make my RL job much easier, it's people who take responsibility for their own actions.

Linden Labs provide a service. If you breach the terms of service, Linden labs reserve the right to withdraw that service in their ToS. I would liken that to the state ability to seize assets gained by fraudulent methods.

This entire case, to me, drops into the category. Mr Bragg obtained this virtual property by deception; it was therefore forfeit. With regards to any property he gained legally, he knew he was jeopardizing that when he tried to cheat the system. He knew the risks. Breach of ToS equals banning with no compensation.

This comes down to culpability. It's got nothing to do with what Linden Labs can and can't do, want to do and don't want to do. This was one person who purposefully set out to break the rules, IN THE KNOWLEDGE that if he got caught, Linden Labs would ban him. At the end of the day, that's the issue at the back of this - whether or not he should take responsibility for deliberately breaking the rules and the consequences involved in getting caught.

The fact remains, if he hadn't deliberately tried to cheat the system, there would have been nothing for him to be caught doing and nothing that Linden Labs would have banned him over. I do agree that if Linden Labs just close your account with no explanation and seize your assets you'd have cause to bring case against them, but everyone seems to be of agreement that this person DID CHEAT.

If you're honest, you don't risk anything. This person wasn't, and he got unlucky and got caught. He paid the price. He can't expect the judiciary to come to his rescue because he committed fraud in the first place. Sorry, but I don't have ANY sympathy for him, and neither do I believe that he has a case.

Wildcat in the news

For those who are interested, I'm on page 30 of the first edition of Metaverse Messenger of 2007 featured in an article about what Linden Labs can do about griefers. There was obviously nowhere near enough space to feature my proposals to deal with the problems, so as promised I'll say more about it here.

Many governments use points for drivers, to decide who has broken the rules to such a degree that they warrant a ban. Why can we not adopt this for Second Life? My points system would work as follows:

• Probation period: Most griefers can now create new free accounts and get straight to griefing. I propose for the first six hours of a residents "life" that the points penalties are automatically doubled.


• The system is based around 10 points. Sanctions begin at 3 points, then 6, then 9 and finally 10. Points lapse at the rate of 2 per hour. Automatic suspensions lapse after 12 hours.


• Residents may "warn" other residents ONCE per twenty four hour period.
  


• In order to "warn" another resident, a resident MUST enter a description of what that warning is for. (if they try to leave it blank, the system asks if they want to abandon the warning). The warning may be set to be a minimum number of characters to eliminate someone putting in a few dots. Warning texts are visible to Linden Labs employees as a right-click option on a resident. Warnings stay on file for two weeks, and may be brought up by Linden Labs employees investigating abnormally high numbers of warnings or suspensions, or reports of consistant abuse.


• Each time a unique resident "warns" another resident, the warned resident's point total increases by one. Probationary residents may not warn other residents until they have been "alive" in Second Life for six hours. (that's six hours online time) - by the time they've been around for six hours they should know enough to judge, and this would effectively eliminate griefers subverting the points system as a tool for griefing.


• After 3 points (three warnings from different residents) the warned resident loses the ability to run scripts. Any scripted items cease working. The resident becomes unable to equip scripted items. Unscripted items such as clothes may be equipped normally. The resident receives a popup notifying them they have 3 points against them, and that they are now being sanctioned.


• After a further 3 points (the resident now has 6 points against them) the resident becomes unable to 'talk' on the general channel. They may IM normally, and be IM'd, but anything they "say" only has a whisper distance, thereby stopping them flooding places like the welcome area. It wouldn't stop them from communicating, anybody standing right next to them will be able to hear them, but it would stop textflooding and textspamming. They receive a further popup warning them of this.


• After a further 3 points (the resident now has 9 points against them) the resident loses the ability to enter or teleport to private land. Access is restricted to Govenor Linden lands; the roads, welcome areas, intro island etc. They receive a popup box telling them that further harassment will result in a temporary removal of service.


• If they should receive a further point, the system boots them immediately with a popup telling them they are suspended for 12 hours. The system will no longer accept login requests from that resident until 12 hours have passed.

There are a number of major advantages to this system that I can think of. Primarily:

• Griefers can't use it themselves. Probationary accounts can't warn. The vast majority of griefing is done by people creating a free account with the express intention of griefing. If they can be warned, but can't warn themselves for the first six hours of the accounts existence, they're gonna get sick of it pretty quick and go elsewhere.


• Linden Labs only need to get involved if someone constantly gets banned, or if there are reports of the system being abused


• The requirement to enter text describing the reason for the warning will allow Linden Employees to quickly spot patterns that may indicate the system is being abused


• Probationers can get sanctioned at 2 warnings and booted at 5, cracking down on those who create accounts purely to grief.

If anyone has any comments, I'd sure like to hear.

End of a (tiny) era

Well, the first Big Brother in Second Life just finished. Congratulations to the winner Madlen Flint

But will Endemol be back next year? The crashes, griefing, etc must have taken their toll on the patience of the organisers. Even at the final, chat lag caused all kinds of difficulties for the crewmember who was making all the announcements.

At least there wasn't a crash during the final celebration, but if Linden Labs want Second Life to be a viable venue for this kind of thing in the future there still remains a lot of work to do on grid stability and griefers. The first step, I hope, will be a method to more effectively deal with Griefers. The difficulty for Linden Labs is enforcing their age policy, because the downside of free accounts is that people who have been banned before or people who are under the age of consent can easily gain access to Second Life. There remains at this stage no viable method to verify someone's age and yet still allow free accounts. Now, I'm not saying that griefing is solely the realm of the young; far from it. There are older (supposedly) residents who should know better but don't. However, free accounts used by teenagers who want to be "hip" and "cool" and on the adult grid are a problem.

We shall see if Endemol are interested in running Big Brother another year. Big Brother this year has certainly been interesting, when it wasn't offline through technical difficulties. It would be a shame if Endemol didn't come back another year.

To be private, or not to be private

Being part of various support groups leads me to find a new bug in the system, which I was told about by a friend. A while ago, SL changed the Friends list to be able to use a tickbox option to allow or forbid people on your friends list from seeing you online. The idea, no doubt, was that someone who was feeling like they didn't want to drown under IMs from people on their friends list could, if they wanted, turn off the ability for others to see them online.

The problem is, that hasn't kept pace with the "publicity" function of the website, which shows who is on your friends list when you view your account. That will continue to show EVERYONE on the friends list, regardless of whether they've selected the privacy option again.

There are some vulnerable people on SL who quite value the privacy option, Linden Labs, if you're reading this - There was a good reason you introduced the friend list visibility option in the first place. Can you now make sure your own website follows the same ruleset?