What is it with these people who seem to get their jollies off by crashing the grid and pissing off 10,000 innocent people?
You have a problem with Linden Lab? Fine, you’re entitled to – in fact most of us are probably quite pissed off with LL over something or another – but why do you think bringing down the grid with a self replicating object – which in itself is about 6 lines of simple code – gets your point across?
You aren’t hurting Linden Lab, they really don’t care about us on the mainland (why do you think all the major companies and events are being held on islands which are firewalled and away from the main grid, with often constant Linden presence just to make sure these things don’t happen to the important people – ie those who pay lots of money and come here occasionally, rather than the people like me who pay less money (although my $40 tier is not ‘chickenfeed’ to me) and come here almost every day, creating our world, our imagination, and providing a quality experience for others to enjoy.
You may find it “fun” watching the grid grinding to a halt as thousands of talking beachballs bounce across the grid – but just think for a moment what you’re doing. Disrupting support meetings for people who SL could be literally life and death. Ruining someone’s wedding. Destroying their half-finished project as autoreturn kicks in. Costing people whose real life existance is based upon their SL income money. Is your vendetta against Linden Lab – who just have to reach over, click a few buttons, clear up your crap once more, and reopen login a few hours later to make it look like they did some hard work? It wouldn’t be so bad if Philip Linden had to get out of bed, run down the street in his Superman pyjamas and fluffy slippers, to go and restart the servers manually, but all you are doing is giving some very bored Grid Monkeys something to do instead of watching the porn channel on the TV in the restroom.
It’s clear the ‘hardware hash ban’ isn’t working – pick up a crappy old network card on Ebay for $2, install it, and you’re back in. And again. And again.
I’ve never understood Linden Lab. Those who are honest and try to create verified alts get stung with a $10 charge (with a maximum of 5 per card), those who enter fake information and don’t verify can create as often as they like for free. It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone – except the griefers, who can’t even be bothered to try something impressive. Self replicating beachballs preaching messages of doom are sooooo last month.
In the normal world, honesty is rewarded. Seems like the case isn’t so in the virtual world. That’s a worrying insight into the future of the inteverse metaweb thingy.
October 10, 2006 at 11:10 am
My point of view is surely biased, because I’m on a free-account. But the point of view of the people who complain about free-account residents is biased as well, because they obviously are on a paid-account.
That said, I think that your division between “honest” and “not honest” people is ridiculous. I’m on a free account, and I never harmed any other resident. I would not play Second Life if I should pay for it. I would not play Second Life if I should put my personal information on the web in order to do it – that’s dangerous for privacy.
Lots of people complain about free-account residents, and they don’t understand that free-account residents are an important part of the SL ecosystem.
You really think you may stop grid attacks by limiting free-account access?
Grid attacks will stop when SL code will have been properly patched or rewritten.
October 10, 2006 at 5:03 pm
As long as you aren’t a grid crashing griefer, I don’t have any concerns that you’re a free account.
I’m just making the point that it seems odd that people can spend money and invest time and more money in creating their second life, yet have it all destroyed or be inconvenienced by hours of downtime by a griefer on an unlimited free account who has nothing to lose – and can come back with alt after alt causing endless problems.
Many pieces of software – not just games – have a ‘limited feature preview’ version which you can use to get a feel for it before you spend out cash to get the full unlocked version. If SL did the same, it would stop many of the problems. Even simply getting rid of ‘unverified’ would be a big difference and require details even if you didn’t get charged – as a deterrent.
People don’t think twice about giving their card details to Ebay or any other online payment thing – so why should it be so difficult to give those same details for Second Life?
I still strongly believe that the ‘free for life’ marketing is seriously detrimental both to the good of Second Life and the economic viability of Linden Lab – which is something that ultimately affects us all.
Lewis