Kasandra Morgan - it's a question of ethics

One point to note:

if you need to pay someone, instead of holding the money in your account (and thereby opening yourself up to the possibility of spending it) and waiting for them to be online, why not simply call up the persons profile, and pay them the amount, with an explanatory IM or two? I'm sure that most, if not all, SL residents would be thankful and may even give some token of appreciation.

I hope that this situation is resolved quickly - please remember that this forum is viewable by the general public - think about what impression we wish to give to those who are checking out the game for the first time....please....

Charlton

Well, had I paid him before he removed the game it would still be deductable by the game.

Whine, whine, whine, rant, rant, rant.
A thread designed with the sole purpose of attacking someone should in theory be a violation of the ToS.
You should be ashamed of yourself.

> Well, had I paid him before he removed the game it would > still be deductable by the game.

True...yes...hadn't thought that bit thru....

CP

Eggy, you insufferable twit! You reek of codliver oil! Your elbows taste like rancid gerbil dung! You have the demeanor of a bloated water buffalo! No more shall we tolerate your incoherent ramblings in these forums! Begone foul buffoon, before we...we...before we give you a melvan!

What on earth is a melvan?

Melvan, also known as a wedgie.

Ohhh I see, LOL! Please excuse my, uh, non-nativeness

tisk tisk tisk now thats not kewl.

"birthday money" do adults get birthday money? Anyone else notice that little blurb? Peronaly this sounds like the actions of someone who is not just yet an adult. As the adult "right" thing to do was not done. Tony sorry to hear this happened to you. Learn from it, please. Hugz Cath

Uh, Cat, I happen to know Kasandra, and I can confirm that she is both an adult and a "starving student", much like myself
Kasandra may still be a little new here but she is well on her way to becoming a valued member of the community.
I asked her to help me with Ama's arcade in Taber and she completely rebuilt it, revamped the games and had a massively successful event in all of 3 days.
She is by far the most driven, hard-working person I have EVER met in this game. If only half of us had her stamina.

Also a self proclaimed gambling addict and theif. Eggy, eggy, eggy, *shakes head.

Hugz his nieve wittle head.

Posted by you earlier:

Woot! Busted! Pwned to all you 1337s out there.

I'm really surprised that SL casinos don't seem to have some detection to track how much money a person has won, or how many times in a row.

Unlike what some seem to think, the reality of any gambling device is to beat the player more than the player beats it. If the machine doesn't follow that logic, it's more like a low risk charity box.

Ethically, if an ATM was paying out, I might not take advantage of that. But if I found a broken slot machine in a casino and nobody was looking, I'd play that thing until it was broke, and take my wheelbarrow of silver dollars to the bank. Wouldn't you? If you got caught and denied you knew, the casino staff would undoubtedly tell you that you should have realized it as soon as you started to win...because they know you are supposed to lose, and let's face it, so do you. But they would not be able to get the money back unless they could prove you were in on it. Same with a crappy dealer.

Real casinos will not let you game if you consistently beat the odds, even if they can't figure out how you are doing it. They'll pull slot machines and check/reset them if somebody wins too much.

On a game like the one described here, it would seem that anybody who won more than twice has beaten odds that should be up there with getting hit by lightning inside on a sunny day. Maybe some counter like this would help prevent such losses, even if the machine was bugged.

Talk about a great use for an out-of-game tracker. Pull up a web page and see who has won what, anytime, anywhere. If you see a cheat pattern, issue an offline command to shut down the machine with ID # etc.

Dev! english if even in pm pls

The next time something like this happens, and you feel you can't give the money back to the person directly, but need to 'hold' it, give it to a 3rd uninvolved party to hold. Also, immediately post about it in the forums to remove any culpability.

I would have been more than willing to help in a situation like this. If you had given the money to me to hold, then posted that fact in the forums, it would pretty much keep me from spending it.

If you were worried that the person in question just wasn't coming back at all, then a certain amount of time could have been set as to when you would get to keep the money - it would definitely be much longer than 2 days though.

Essentially what we have here is a situation of Found Money. The same as if someone had dropped a deposit bag on the way to the bank.

I believe in most states, a find of money of any significant amount is required to be reported.

Wanting to give the money back and initially attempting to do so is very commendable. What happened after is, well, the opposite of commendable.

I really am not trying to bust your chops Kasandra. Just trying to offer suggestions.

Also, I think this whole issue is pushing toward something we need to be careful of. When we start talking of gambling addictions and such in relation to SL, we're getting into some dark territory, and into things that might be red flags to certain authorities.

Let's see if we can keep this a happy, semi-non-regulated virtual world as long as possible.

Next time ANYTHING remotely awkward happens, or anything that falls into a "grey area", GET A LINDEN.
That's what they are being paid for, customer support.
If something like that happened to me I would call the nearest linden and have them deactivate the script or something.

In fairness, I do think I remember her saying lindens refused to take action.

Heh. I guess I did. I honestly looked through my past posts; I guess I skimmed too lightly.

Still, I didn't mean to assert that Tony had committed an immoral act, but rather, that what happened to him was only the logical conclusion of his actions. He was in no sense "victimized." He played a game, he lost big time, big deal. He didn't "deserve" to lose, but he got what was coming to him.

I guess I lack the word to describe the situation accurately. Forgive my oversight.

Heh I somehow missed that. You're right she did say that. I'm very surprised that LL was so unresponsive. It never ceases to amaze me how much LL support has gradually deteriorated over time.

Right, I can understand this. I've certainly never written bug-free code. But the statement still stands, "If you don't want to get kicked in the shin, don't write buggy code." If writing buggy code is inevitable, then you're going to have to get used to getting kicked in the shin every now and then. For some scripters that means crashing sims. But you've chosen to write scripts that debit your L$ account. What do you expect to happen?


This money was fairly won -- albeit through an exploit, but the script freely gave this money. It was hers. When Kasandra promised to pay back this money, the money did not become yours. When she proved unable to provide you the full amount, then, she was not in effect taking the difference from you; I can understand your disappointment, but it doesn't constitute an ethical wrong.

You didn't deserve a dime. You're lucky that Kasandra has been as upfront as she has been. And yet you've chosen to castigate her in the forums for not completely compensating you for a loss which was your own fault. If anyone's guilty of an ethical blunder...


The circumstances: You wrote exploitable code that was, well, exploited. It's not surprising that the exploit was found, or that it was exploited. If Kasandra hadn't done it, it probably would only have been a matter of time before someone else would have.


"Feel" is such an ugly, contemptible word. It excuses people from behaving rationally and providing justifications for their decisions.

The original act here was not unethical. Kasandra did not break your machine, she did not hack your machine, she did nothing but play it in a way that optimized her advantage, a way that was made available to her by your own actions and your own code. The money she won in this way was fairly won.

After having won the money, she offered to pay it back, realizing that she had acquired the money through a mistake you had made. This was a noble gesture, but hardly expected or required of her.

Between having acquired the money and getting the opportunity to give it to you, she gambled away the money, so that when the time came to give you the money, she had much less than she had originally intended to pay back.

While this is understandably disappointing and upsetting, I fail to see how this constitutes an unethical act deserving of vilification. Perhaps it can be said that Kasandra lacks self-discipline and maybe makes poor decisions now and then, but the money she gambled was her money, her original intentions to pay it all back to you notwithstanding. You can "feel" whatever you want about it, but dragging her name into the forums so as to facilitate gang neg-rating is hardly justified.


I'm not missing the point at all. I'm trying to show why you have no right to "call out attention to" Kasandra's behavior. She is not a villain here; if anything, you're being immature. You can "believe" or "feel" whatever you like, but trying to tar Kasandra's name here is completely uncalled for and not justified by any reasoning anyone has offered here.


This demonstrates the sloppiness with which people are thinking here. They try to argue that "once the money's been promised, it's no longer yours," but then they always fall back on the original acquisition of the money itself to lend moral weight to their argument.

These are two separate acts. The first was getting the money in the first place. The acquisition of the money was fair-and-square, Tony. You wrote exploitable code, and she exploited it. TOUGH COOKIES.

The second: She promised to pay back the full sum, and failed to. That's another matter. An ethical wrong? No. Because you didn't deserve that money in the first place. If you had deserved it, maybe it could be argued that she shouldn't have gambled it, which is why you fall back on the original act, but again, there's no way that the original act constitutes "theft." You did not deserve any money; you are understandably disappointed and in some sense frustrated by the fact that she promised you the money but could only pay back half of it, but you are hardly in any position to criticize what graciousness she's offered.


Again, you are asserting that having acquired the money through an exploit in your code constitutes "theft." It does not. The machine gave her the money exactly as it was designed to do. Admittedly, not to your advantage, but you were not wronged by the original act. You lost.

TOUGH.

COOKIES.

Let me think about it.

Hmmm.

Well...

DEAR LORD, NO!

It's bad enough we have Land Barons. Now we get bank and insurance barons, too? For goodness sakes, where will it stop? The economy is already more institutionalized than it should be. It's already too much of a "money game" as it is, something this entire thread demonstrations.

People get ugly when money is involved.

Uh, tapping back into an earlier thread, I have zero sympathy for "gambling addictions." What a incredibly lame exuse. "Oh, it isn't MY fault or responsbility-- you see, I have this GAMBLING ADDICTION, so I'm just a victim, too!" I mean, without moving this reply to the rants forum, I am speechless that anyone would really be willing to assassinate their own self-respect in such a manner. You are an adult, take responsibility for yourself. If not, it's people like you that encourage the erosion of my rights by the government. Gah!

edited for spelling

YOU.

DON'T.

GET.

IT.

Point out to me where I said what Kasandra did constitutes theft. You can't, because I didn't.

By all of your confused, twisted arguments, the only point you're really arguing with me on is that what she did is ethically wrong. If you can't see that, then perhaps you have the same problem. I wonder how your argument would change if this happened to you or Kasandra. She does, after all, run a casino as well. Basically you're saying I could do the same thing as her and chalk it up to TOUGH COOKIES. Pfft.

Have to agree with Tony here. Phineas you deride others for making ethical judgements then posit several of your own in an overly verbose fashion. Rhetoric won't hide the facts here.

You've asserted again and again that her playing your game in such a way so as to acquire heaps of your money was unethical. Fine. You didn't call it "theft" directly; what are you calling it?

All I'm getting at is that you've offered no specific rationale for describing her original acquisition of your money through your device as unethical; you've merely asserted it and repeated yourself. Why was what she did wrong? If she did not "steal" your money, then what didshe do? Is she guilty of being unethical, or of being undisciplined?


The "same problem?" What, exactly, is this "problem?" Are you talking about Kasandra's gambling problem? Or her apparently inherent unethical nature?

If I'm not "getting it," it's only because you've failed to explain yourself in a convincing or clear way.

As for the roles being switched -- I have admitted that I'd be miffed, too. My criticism is not of you being miffed. My criticism is of your rationale for describing Kasandra as "unethical," because, to present, you have offered none. And I would hope, had I been in your situation, that I would have had the clarity of mind to at least recognize that 40k is better than nothing, and to be able to laugh this all off as just part of a game.