Archive for August, 2011

Justice League Drama

Posted in Dramas on August 26, 2011 by Wizzy

Apparently there are these avatars who run around Secondlife in their underwear, thinking they are superheroes.  Problem is that their vigilantism has led them to compile a database on SL citizens with private RL information linked to their virtual identities, like IP address, street address, real name, and more.  #JLUgate is what I’m calling it. http://bit.ly/qd8F3Z

The last time this sort of thing happened the perpetrator ended up in RL jail.  #redzonegate

Apparently, the JLU was successful at having one of Prok’s blogs removed/deleted. http://bit.ly/oMP9Qb #JLUgate

The Case of the Missing Meeroo

Posted in Dramas with tags , on August 19, 2011 by Wizzy

Despite the fact that I was the last one to tweet @BritishMeeroo (with an offer of candy) I deny any involvement in his disappearance.  I have a good alibi.

At long last, the Linden Endowment for the Arts is endowing a sim to an artist to build and display their art. What a concept.

@rodvik says that new signups are up 60%.  if so, why is concurrency flat?

Google continues to be an asshat, but internal leaks seem to indicate that not everyone at Google Inc. is happy with the way Google+ names policy is going.

Never try to teach a pig to wrestle.

Posted in Dramas on August 16, 2011 by Wizzy

“Never try to teach a pig to wrestle. You only get muddy and the pig enjoys it.”

Inara Pey may be a nice lady.  I don’t know her.  Some of my friends evidently do. But I call bullshit.

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, here we go again.  Ms. Pey has decided to take me on for what she calls my “Attitude.”  In case you are unaware, I recently called her on a factual error she made in her summary of Rod Humble’s keynote address to SLCC.  In a comment to her blog I pointed out that she had reported that the Linden Lab CEO had claimed that “LL’s income is over $75 million,” when in fact what he said was that LL’s Gross Revenue is over $75 million.  For you non-accountants out there, Revenue is the “top-line.”  Revenue minus your costs (like labor and rent and servers) = Income.  Income is the “bottom-line.”  To confuse the two is a big mistake and very misleading for an unaware reader.

I’m sure Linden Lab would love for people to think it was true.

Irregardless, as I was posting a second comment to her blog, she corrected her error in the Blog text and then proceeded to delete my comment.  I watched it happen in real time.  I posted several comments then and each one was deleted until I informed her that I had screen shots.

She is now claiming that she reacted in this manner because of a previous blog comment of mine, where I complained that her many misspellings of “patent” as “patient”  were distracting me from what she was trying to say. In that blog she did a similar thing — corrected her mistake and then deleted my comment.

In both cases, she directed her ire at me personally, for my attitude.  This is known as the “Ad Hominem” attack — attack the person instead of addressing the issue.

The day before yesterday I blogged about these incidents, only because they are so outrageous.  I let the first incident go, in fact I had forgotten about it.  But the second incident exposes a pattern and requires some attention.

Ms. Pey has now responded to my blog post.   https://wizardgynoid.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/todays-dramas-6/#comments

She continues to assert several interesting things.  She claims that she deleted my comments because of my “immature threat.”  In fact, she deleted the comments before I told her I had screen shots that showed she was doing so. She then claims that I followed her on Twitter so as to tweet about the matter.  In fact, I tweeted first about what was happening.  Some time afterwards I searched to see if she was on Twitter.  Finding her, I tried to follow her but found that I was already blocked from doing so.  She then calls me “childish.”

It is not necessary for me to follow someone to tweet about them.

Next she challenges my account of the number of misspellings of “patient” for “patent.”  She makes the claim that she only found two and corrected them.  So she admits that there were a significant number of them, since two remain.  It so happens that I found the original version of that blog in Google cache.  There it is in its pristine glory, before I alerted her to the many misspellings.  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XtoRMZkyL5sJ:modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/the-viewer-licence-to-patent/+http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/the-viewer-licence-to-patent/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

As you can see for yourself, in a blog on the topic of patents, she misspells patent as patient SIX  times.  My comment simply was that this was distracting.

As a matter of fact, her blog with the Income mistake (before my comments) is recorded for all to see in Google cache here:   http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J59oEcSQN-YJ:modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/rodvik-at-slcc-2011-the-gist/+http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/rodvik-at-slcc-2011-the-gist/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

I might ask who is being childish?

Today’s Dramas

Posted in Dramas on August 15, 2011 by Wizzy

@anonymous seems to accomplish what it sets out to do, perhaps purely due to the inertia of such big numbers.  Four BART stations shut down peacefully today after hacking two websites yesterday.

Today’s Dramas

Posted in Dramas on August 14, 2011 by Wizzy

The Inara Pey Drama

Inara Pey has a blog.  I don’t know the woman but I’m sure she’s a nice lady.  She likes to blog about SL issues.  Recently she blogged about the SpotOn3d Copyright and Patent issues (which I have presented as a continuing Drama here.)  This is admirable, however after I mentioned in a comment that I found it distracting that over half of the words (5 or 6) meant to read as “patent” read “patient,”and that “license” was misspelled as “licence,” she took umbrage.  I read a lot of blogs and most of them make an attempt to edit their work.  As for comments about things of this nature, it has been my experience that reasonable bloggers simply acknowledge their mistake, thank you for your attention and move on.   Ms. Pey attempted to correct the numerous misspellings of “patient,” but left two.  It appears she wants to leave the impression that there were only two inadvertent misspellings.  She then deleted my comment, leaving my second comment about the spelling of the word “license.” It’s apparent from the context that there is a deleted comment.   http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/the-viewer-licence-to-patent/

Today Ms. Pey blogged a summary of Rod Humble’s keynote address at SLCC.  This too is laudable.  However, she made a mistake quoting Rodvik as saying that Secondlife’s annual income is over $75 million.  I’ve been following Secondlife’s financial claims closely and I knew this not to be factually correct, and I was certain Rodvik hadn’t actually said that.

I posted a follow-up comment that confirmed that Rodvik had said, “We publicly say that our top-line is at least $75 million.”  Top-line means Revenue, not Income.

Then I happened to notice that the blog had been changed so that “income” had been replaced by the hyphenated word “top-line.”  When I posted the second comment my first one disappeared.  It had been deleted.

Then my second comment disappeared.  Evidently, Ms. Pey had seen fit to correct her mistake but didn’t want anyone to see my comment, in the same manner as the earlier blog.  To me, this looks like pretending that no mistake had ever been made.  Perhaps she was hoping I wouldn’t notice.  I left another comment that read, “I think it would be a good idea for you to leave my post. i have screenshots that you are removing them.”  This comment then disappeared.

This was too much.  I posted a tweet about what was happening and the last comment suddenly reappeared, along with a reply that said, “The one-word error has been corrected. Grow up and stop making silly threats.” At this time, this comment and reply remain on the blog along with my final comment.  The blog post has been locked from further comment. But you will see that Ms. Pey can’t spell the word “international” as well.  I have also been blocked from following her on Twitter.

See for yourself: http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/rodvik-at-slcc-2011-the-gist/

Today’s Dramas

Posted in Dramas on August 12, 2011 by Wizzy

Google continues it’s asshat behavior.  I found this interview of Google  CEO Eric Schmidt  http://bit.ly/4vYOGk .  This is 2009 and he is spouting the same line as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  He calls us “miscreants.”  Note the significance of the comment about the Patriot Act.  MSNBC picks up the story here: on.msnbc.com/mPlcff .  Google continues to dig its heels in further, which intrigues me as to their motivations.

San Francisco’s BART censored wireless cell phone service in order to thwart a protest on their property.  The ACLU calls it unconstitutional censorship: http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/cell-phone-censorship-san-francisco

Miso Susanowa has a new blog called Netpolitik, which is dedicated to The Politics of Information  http://netpolitiks.blogspot.com/2011/08/netpolitik-politics-of-information.html

 

 

Today’s Dramas

Posted in Dramas, Uncategorized on August 11, 2011 by Wizzy

We lost Brinda today. I admit I cried.

In answer to the complaint: “If you don’t like it, don’t use it,” We find a novel reply. Google+ is *not* free.  We pay by providing the information that they monetize.  Therefore, since we are paying for the product, we have the right to complain about it.  http://socialmediacollective.org/2011/08/11/if-you-dont-like-it-dont-use-it-its-that-simple-orly/

Today’s Dramas

Posted in Dramas on August 10, 2011 by Wizzy

A cheeky British Meeroo is going around spreading a vicious rumor that some of us are planning a Meeroo BBQ.

Aug 10th started out with “Anonymous will kill Facebook on November 5th” going viral.  No one seems to tweet the primary source, which is: http://youtu.be/SWQTS8zqYXU Anonymous now claims that video is a fake.  Facebook goes down anyway.

Today’s Dramas

Posted in Dramas on August 9, 2011 by Wizzy

SpotON3D applies for FIVE patents in regard to their development of a Web Viewer for Open Sim.

Thirza Ember threatens to unfollow anyone else who tweets about Google+.

Numbskulls blame London riots on social networks like twitter.  Threaten to ban and confiscate blackberries.

 

Today’s Dramas

Posted in Dramas on August 8, 2011 by Wizzy

Anonymous hacks the Syrian Defense Ministry’s website. Takes hours for major news outlets to pick up the news. Twitter wins hands down.

Nymday, Nymday, gotta get down on Nymday.  Aug 8 started off with a bang with #nymday .  Tweeters and Google+ profiles support Nymday with single color profile pics. bit.ly/phI7cJ