Open letter to the owner of slstats.com

1) Did you ever think of why Torley posted Mark's response in SL Answers? Because it's a Linden-reply-only forum, and Torley clearly denoted that it was Mark who wrote this. As for using "Linden orange", s/he really can't turn that off. I found Torley's appology completly unneccessary.
2) I consider myself a resonable person, and I haven't been bitten, so there's no need to be shy from it. Ad hominem attack.
3) Ad hominem attack ("go back to school, whippersnapper!" combined with a compliment to try to cover it up.
Also, your "air of formality" adds a level of condecention that is quite unneccesary. It very much sounds like you feel lik you're better than everone else.
--Jesse

Better than you, sir, who have never met a privacy invasion (slstats.com) or griefer aid (libSL) that he couldn't jump to the defense of.

#1 - Mark is, at best, untrustworthy and condenscending in ALL his posts, and it was a mistake for Torley to act as his personal emissary. She should have told him to post in the answers form and THEN MOVED his post, as she did Lewis and others. Instead, she granted him the APPEARANCE of Linden blessing. She screwed up, gave the appearance of favoritism...even has ANOTHER Linden publically disagree...she deserved to apologize (and I accept it, it was a class decision on her part).

#2 - Sure you haven't been bitten...you're one of those 'Gee Whiz! Tech!' people that love everthing techie without regard for issues like privacy. Rest of us were bitten by him and HARD.

#2 - He NEEDS to learn some ethics. Last class I had in engineering school (and required at my university) was professional ethics. I GUARANTEE I would NOT have implemented the system as mark did it....would NOT have even considered it as it was first released. Just because something technically CAN be done does NOT make it ethically proper to do so. Mark needs to learn this fact and apply it to his future endeavors.

Amazing how YOU make comments on people's knowledge and technical skills (please re-read your posts in the libSL thread) and its not ad hominem...but anyone challenges YOU or a project YOU like....you dance up and down like a puppet on a string shouting 'ad hominem! ad hominem!'.

And Showdog, bless you for the formality of your posts! We need far more people like you in SL and far less folks like Mark and his supporters who cannot comprehend basic ethics.

As I have said time and again, just because something is techincally possible does not mean that (from an ethical standpoint) that it should be done. Mark acted without considering the ethical and human ramifications of his project, got his knuckles rapped and hard by his fellow players (after tarnishing Torley in the process), then did what a resonable and ethical person would have done from the word go...made it an opt-in.

The problem with my Tarn is that I can not look at the scripts for myself. I got one of those watches and tried to take it "apart". There are if I remember corectly three scripts two operational ones and a delete script of some sort. These scripts can not be seen but that means nothing. Most scripts are protected in second life to protect them from being stolden.
I am not a supporter or a opposer of Mark because all of the facts are not known. I have seen his messages, those that oppose him and those that are slandering him. I am not giving names for any of the above.
This does bring about the question of trust. How can we trust the scripting of any of the objects in Second Life. You are the only resident to aknowledge my concerns over this. The next is a really good one, how do we know that these scripts are not invading our computers and sending back infomation from our computers through our second life client servers? This is much more of a concern than the infomation Mark said he was collecting. If we can not trust him why should we trust any of the scripters? How do we know that the scriper object we bought is not doing more than what we expect?

Again, it is evident that you have a chip on your sholder, and a supreme dislike of "code monkeys" and people who don't share your worldview.
I'm (inadvertantly) an evangalist for everything you consider bad, wrong, or evil, and will continue to be such.
Where have I attacked your knowledge and technical skills? Granted, I'm not perfect, and have made ad hominem attacks in the past, but such does not instantaniously disqualify me from pointing them out as I see them.
As with the libsecondlife discussion, I'm hereby resigning from this thread as there is nothing productive left here to be said, just mistrust and grudges (well, aside from the sensor vs. "ping" lag testing, I'd still like to see the outcome of that).
Signed in blood,
Jesse Malthus.

For what its worth, here's my take on all of this:

I wore the watch for the first couple days to try it out. I thought the statistics were neat, and if anything, I wish there was more.

Since then, I've stopped wearing the watch for two reasons:

1 - While the collection of my own stats is fine by me, I respect the fact that there are a lot of people concerned by this activity. Simply by wearing the watch, I was contributing to making others unwilling participants, and that just didn't sit well with me.

2 - Ironically, now that Mark has addressed most of the concerns put forth by the forum community, the data just isn't that 'cool' anymore. Unless a good proportion of folks chose to opt-in, the tiny subset of data being collected now just doesn't seem that valuable.

If I were in Mark's shoes, I think I'd have learned at least the following lesson out of all this:

If you're going to collect mass statistics, either keep it anonymous - or don't publicize it.
(Note that lots of folks are collecting user data every day. Its just not publicized like Mark did here.)

As to Ranma's question re: Trust: Its a personal decision you have to make. *Any* time you encounter a scripted object that you did not create yourself or the source is not open, it could be potentially collecting data and sending it somewhere. Even your Tarn, (if the maker of it chose to) could be sending your usage statistics elsewhere (although highly unlikely).

I suppose you have to weigh the importance of travelling & enjoying our world, but with some folks potentially monitoring you - vs. - holeing yourself up on a private sim, surrounded by only your own scripted objects.... and living a very solitary Second life.

IMHO, the concern is genuine, but not important enough to me to change what I do or where I go.

Oh, what the fuck!! Grow up.

Dearly Darling Jesse,

Being a little old lady, I will never, ever stop being polite. I'm sorry you are mistaking good manners for condescention.

Mr. Lambert was one of the first avatars I met here. He can attest that every one is Dear as well as being precious, perfect and adorable.

As for the posting by the LL employee...as the missive was not her authorship it should not have been posted in that fashion. LL often has one employee post things that were written by another employee due to work constraints. That is her/his job to do so. Posting for a client is wrong. It shows bias within the game. Mark is a smart young man and can certainly do his own typing for the Forums.

Perhaps one day we can meet for tea. You will find I'm not an evil old cow.

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger

A little testy are we Chronic?

I don't see how anyone could think that Showdog is anything other than a nice polite old lady.

And I need to grow up?!

Tem

Too funny!

Tem

Yes, you do. Saying that "no man is ever to be trusted" is absolutely foolish, and has made me take you and any opinion you have with a grain of salt. I would also tell someone who said the same thing about women that they need to grow up. Your statement is insulting, especially to those of us who go out of our way to be trustworthy. Maybe if you treated people with a little more trust and respect, you might have fewer incidents in your life that would make you blurt out such a ridiculous generalization.

Also, I like Showdog's posts. Where did I say anything about or to Showdog until this post? I am confused, but I guess that is part of being a hairy, knuckle-dragging, scheming MAN.

SL data is LL data to do with what they please. THeir TOS only states that your personal info is what is private.

Google Cache has my slstats profile. Ceera was right. Though this page looks rather small.
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:3W03TktatKkJ:slstats.com/user/view/Yiffy%2BYaffle+Yiffy:Yaffle&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a

Hmmm... my name wasn't in the database!

But now I got a watch and it is! This is cool.

Last time I checked, I wasn't in it, either.

Nobody wants to spy on me.

hehehehehe... Well, tell me where you are and I'll do a fly-by!

Also, http://w-hat.com/name2key let's you download their database. Cool. Don't know what for, but cool nevertheless.

This is an old and outdated thread.

Ah. But it still had a couple of good links.

SLstats.com is in serious breach of privacy laws... hmmm... maybe not.... dont we have a Patriot Act...

Ok rename SLStats.com as SLPatriot.com and everything will go fine. None has the right to criticise even... rofl

I also believe that my outrage on this subject may make me seem more important than I am.
so um... STOP THE STATS!!

Huh!?