Lol!!  Or are you just being dismissive?

Apparently it's someone from a film and book.

I think that's what I was trying to say.  If Thomas can change his own approach to the rest of the simming community, it might go some way to getting them enough customers returning that it makes up for the relatively small losses to piracy.   As I have said before, most of the booty users would not have been customers anyway, they would have probably shared stuff privately with their subscriber friends rather than making a public issue of using the booty.  So I don't think TSR "lost" any significant portion of their paying users to piracy.   Many people chose to stop subbing due to worries about their data (I mean in theory someone who shares personal contact details might be moved to share credit card details on another occasion) and are not using TSR content at all currently rather than pirate, because they feel two wrongs don't make a right - similar to my attitude.

The thing is though, Thomas is a part-owner.  There is not really anyone in a position to dismiss him.   But you'd think he'd want his business to do as well as it can, and part of that is getting the PR right.

What has a tendency to inculpate Thomas is his expressed attitude.  That as of last time I spoke to him he considered it totally correct to do unprofessional and probably illegal things to overcome piracy.   In some ways and from some aspects one could say he has a fair point.  The problem for TSR is the effect it has had on their image, even amongst non-pirating sims players, and those who risk suffering collateral damage.

Every software gets pirated, and every store has shoplifters.   The idea is that with a good enough reputation, and with good enough value, the legitimate customers will ensure the business thrives and loss to theft will remain *relatively* small.   Although I have subscribed in the past, in today's economic climate fewer people will feel they can committ to a monthly outgoing, which is currently the same price as an entire hosting package!   TSR needs to explore other ways of attracting spending, such as pay per download etc so as to get impulse buys happening.   There are a couple of sets I would have bought on impulse if the price seemed reasonable.  $7 for a month's subscription just so I could get the two sets I wanted did not seem good value.

Other ideas are turn the kudos points into general points that can either be earned like now, or purchased if you want one of their benefits more quickly.  That's similar to how some facebook games work, increasingly one can buy advantages other than content.  Also establish a gifting process, so that grannies can buy points for a member to spend on what they want.

It may have just been expedience.  There was a brief time they were seriously short of FAs.   They may have talked themselves into letting her back for that reason.

So if this is an atwa fiasco, then it *would* be sourced back to the original problem of the doxing, except that neither Johan nor Pescado can think of how she would have gotten the passwords by that means, so the link is broken at that point, making it some other way she got the password.   Maybe she's just a really good hacker and she hacked into TSR also without any authorisation.  

I mean, the woman probably hates *everyone* now, and is on no one's side but her own.

I thought that was what Witchboy was hinting with his "waves to Coconut" after the quote about the rogue operator.

So if coconut == atwa == the person doing the hacking, why are we friendly with her?

While I wouldn't wish to stand in the way of a good old TSR-bashing round, it should be remembered that many of us have people who both dislike us and have enough time and knowledge to hack our sites who are *not* TSR-mediated.   If one starts with the assumption that every hack attack has originated from TSR or ATWA, and downgrades any evidence pointing away from them or towards someone else, one could miss the person who actually did it, and the methods they used.  This result is not helpful to overall security.

I do believe that the sharing of user data with FAs (who are not vetted in any way for security) was a naive error of judgement on the part of TSR for which they should apologise and give reassurances for the future.   However the idea that TSR would be in a huddle in their office orchestrating who to hack next and what names to call them seems a stretch too far for probability.

Surely an email address wouldn't help without a password?

Did you ever have a friend who had admin rights who you later fell out with?  Do you have younger brothers and sisters who might have sat down at your computer finding it already logged into your admin account?  Do you even have people round to your place who might sit down at your computer while you went to the bathroom and play a prank?   If you have any of your accounts set to log in automatically, as you say you tend to, it makes it very insecure if you have lively mischevous visitors.

And just what sort of coincidence could have led to you and your friend's sites being hacked on the same day - was that done via your account too?  Are you admins on each others' sites?

I think Thomas's main agenda is to ensure people don't move away from Workshop in favor of s3oc.   All that matters to him is the image of TSR.   Sadly I think he may be leading Murano in that direction too.

I was an early taker on this attitude too.  Before I saw the file innards I was on the "between us we'll get it sorted" side.  Once I had gotten a good look, I joined your side.   To compound the problem, because of the extra obstacles, many of the people who might have been active in the community analysing file formats and making tools have found it unenjoyable, leaving fewer of the technical wizzes and hackers at our disposal.   A double-whammy.

Paden, you also have the superior ability to pull any thread down to something that looks like a nursery school tantrum.  I think it would be more useful to the community to see Johan's responses to intelligently made points than have him wander off laughing at the impression you are giving.  In spite of your attempt at loyalty, you're not actually doing your friends any favours.   In fact you're not exactly supporting your friends, you're playing O'Grady Says with them, I have noticed, leading them into making themselves look just as silly.