Your2ndPlace

I held off on writing this for a few different reasons. First, while I do not appreciate how I have been treated as a customer, I also do not want to irresponsibly cause problems where none exist. Secondly, it's important to be even handed in this - and doing that does require time. I'll leave the inside knowledge of things to those who have that knowledge; I'll leave the wide eyed speculation to those who want more page views. Sure, page views are important - but so is integrity.

On 21 July, 2007, WSE announced that they would be closing for updates and reopening at 12PM PDT, Tuesday 24th July 2007.

Whether coincidence or not, on the same day that the WSE was supposed to open, Mystik posted that the WSE was hacked. Details on that apparently indicate the site was not hacked, but that Thurston Hallard was given modify rights and used them to his own ends; that 3.2 million Lindens is most likely gone by now - cashed out to allow Thurston to have that vacation in Hawaii. Who knows? Whether this is related or not is purely speculative, but on Tuesday - the ATMs were not opened.

The reopening of ATMs was delayed until Wednesday, 25 July 2007 at noon. That didn't happen; it was postponed until 3 p.m. the same afternoon. That didn't happen, and the signs were not updated either. Rumors spread easily over this sort of thing, and since I have money in WSE, I figured I would go find out what was going on.

When I got there, WSE staff tried giving me placating answers - 'There is no emergency', 'There is nothing to worry about', 'Everything is safe'. I stood there and asked the question, "When will the ATMs be up?" The answer was, 'Soon' which is much of a non-answer as one can give. So I stood there, waiting. Camping, as it were, for the truth.

I stayed for a little over 2 hours, trying to get to the truth of the matter. Weapons were pulled out by WSE staff, saying that they were 'on alert'. This sort of security always amuses me; more imaginative and effective are the weapons which are invisible. I asked if they were meant to intimidate, to which the answer was 'no sir'. Securing an area in Second Life doesn't require weaponry. It requires agile thinking. Some people near me got ejected a few times, I have no idea why.

Still I stood there, waiting, until LukeConnell Vandeverre graced a few of us with his presence. He didn't say much, really, but suddenly the same people who couldn't give me an answer before had one: 15 hours. That put it at 10:30 AM PST today, the 26th of July 2007.

Nope. Missed that. And now the new, unimproved deadline is 12PM PDT 27th July 2007.

Now, I don't know that this is related to the fact that funds were taken from WSE, but I don't know what to think, either. LukeConnell Vandeverre told me yesterday something along the lines of, "You wouldn't understand about web programming projects...". Well, as someone with about 2 decades of experience, I know a few things about web programming projects - one of which is that you have the project done on a development server before you go live. That's a basic principle of software engineering. This does not appear to have happened.

Sure, I can understand that the project might be complicated - but the complications of the project should not affect the ability of people to use a service. This all could be a mismanaged project, or firefighting mode related to security (which seems to have been bypassed through human error), or... the unspeakable.

What do I think? I think that WSE needs to start communicating or people will continue toward connecting the dots and coming up with the unspeakable. The ATMs need to be reopened, even if it means that the system is not updated at this time. The freezing of Mystik's WSE assets, and the paying off of MDS shareholders seems questionable.

No, it is not time to panic - but someone needs to start asking the harder questions in a way that cannot be turned away at gunpoint, or given a non answer to.

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