Yeah, right. (in General)

In this thread, I sold $2M CB2 to FuryLord.

FuryLord swears up and down that (s)he never received the money and has been complaining to me that I "ripped him/her off" because (s)he never received it. The transfer log shows the following:

SNK3R (Inception) 69.225.39.202 FuryLord (FuryLord) $2000000 -- /bboard 001AyX January 27 2005 7:24 PM EST

Since (s)he does not believe me and thinks the transfer logs don't work or that they malfunctioned, this thread is to help him/her realize that wasn't the case.

This question is open to the public: Was the money sent and received or not, and how likely is it that the money wasn't sent?

Weird, I see the transfer, But I don't see the money, and I don't see the money being sent out.

Is there any possibility at all that it may be a bug? There hasn't been any transfers out of his characters. He hasn't bought anything big. All of his stuff has been rented. The only other way I can think of is he blacksmithed something. But he doesn't have anything and is there any way of tracking if he did use the blacksmith on something he loaned? That is already stretching it but I couldn't think of any other way that the 2m could disappear.

The night this happened, you could see the transfer being made to FuryLord.
There were no transfers going out, nor did any of his characters reflect receiving 2 Mil.

Am I mistaken or doesn't he own a exec and exbow?

That exbow certainly looks like it's had some blacksmithing.

I posted that transaction in said sale thread that night.

However, at the time, the money was nowhere to be found on his characters and it was not transferred away. Something that I did notice was that his main character, FuryLord, had very high NW... something like $5.5mil. Naturally I just assumed that he had dumped the money he bought into upping his gear; until I looked at his naked-but-for-a-ToJ mage team.

After another inspection I see that his NW still reads over $5.6m and his team is still the same. As far as I recall, inventory items should not be counted in NW, although I could be wrong. Perhaps there was a transfer bug and the money just "poofed" into his NW figure?

That might sound a tad far-fetched, but it's the only logical conclusion given the evidence. However, if items in your inventory *do* count towards your character's NW, then some deeper investigation might be necessary.

Sorry,
*axbow

In cb1, I was "refunded" 800k, (when Di deleted me) (I think it was 800k lol)

The money showed being sent, but It wasn't on any of my chars, and I never sent it out.

Naturally I was called a liar, but no one could ever find the money :(

I bought that stuff from Holly. Your transfer did NOT reflect in my cash. Simple. I am not doing anything except saying something is wrong in the transfer function. I am out 2 CB2 million, it's a little bit of a bummer for me.

My $0.02

FuryLord (FuryLord) 216.174.39.135 Xlorn (Xlorn) loan An Assassin's Crossbow ($1558533) January 27 2005 5:08 PM EST
SNK3R (Inception) 69.225.39.202 FuryLord (FuryLord) $2000000 -- /bboard 001AyX January 27 2005 7:24 PM EST
FuryLord (FuryLord) 216.174.39.55 Xlorn (Xlorn) loan An Assassin's Crossbow ($3165100) January 28 2005 6:37 AM EST

Also should have posted this.

I'm not saying that this is any proof, I'm not saying that Fury definately did blacksmith it, I'm just saying that I'm not seeing the funds elsewhere (yes I see the other purchased money but it looks like that also went into your items).

sometimes, but rarely, very rarely stuff happens.
I had a char in cb1 that had about $100k I trained and I got a message saying I didnt have money to heal, I go back and check and it says I have -$9,xxx,xxx (!), yeah over negative 9 million, and I lost my 100k (no big deal though :( )

I will be happy just to have this looked into. I don't want to take another beating. Thanks everyone for your due diligence and SNK3R I am -NOT- upset with you in any sense of the word and certainly did not say I was ripped off. I tried to explain myself. I guess I could have posed things better to you.

Thanks everyone. Oh, and if there is a way to get the cash back, that would be a good think in my little book :)

It's quite impossible for the log to be recorded without the money being sent; they're part of the same transaction.

CB is also very careful that transfers are recorded in the database immediately so they cannot be affected by "mini rollbacks" when the web server crashes as sometimes happens. (Obviously on the rare occasions when I have had to restore the database from a backup -- averaging once every two years so far -- everything is lost that happened after the backup snapshot.)

CB even notifies the webserver to update its cache when money is transferred so it shows up immediately when the recipient goes Home. (In other places it's difficult to do this w/o risking deadlock, so you have to hit Train or otherwise force an update, but this is not one of those.)

In short, if CB says it's sent, it damn well got sent. To claim otherwise is a mark of incredible stupidity, or something more malicious.

Now, the only possible way to get away with "money laundering" on CB is the blacksmith. Everything else gets logged. (Transferring entire characters won't work, first because those are logged separately, but even if they weren't, the transferred items will still show up in the log since logging is by character, as many vets know.)

Out of curiosity I had a look at our very reasonable friend FuryLord's server logs. It seems that for the next hour or two after receiving SNK's money on Jan 27, Fury was quite busy upgrading his stuff. Interestingly enough, this is the only time he's been to the blacksmith in the last 10 days.

I've banned FuryLord. Max will be liquidating his holdings and refunding $2M to snk. (I am in a good mood lately -- starting a new job next week! :) The rest will go to Central Bank as usual.

Oh, and dnnx -- you may have noticed that you can't lose money for embarrassing losses on cb2 the way you can on cb1.

Jon,

If you hire another minion, the money doesn't get recorded anywhere. That how I thought I lost 300K, but it turns out I hire another minion. Did FuryLord hire any new minion lately?

Also a good point, arorrr.

Update: I assumed that Fury hadn't paid SNK for the money, but he had. So I guess there's no need for that refund. (And I was feeling all magnanimous, too. :)

I guess given Hanlon's Razor I will give FuryLord another chance, somewhat against my better judgement.

Hanlon's Razor
A corollary of Finagle's law, Hanlon's Razor reads:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
The derivation of the common title "Hanlon's Razor" is unknown; a similar epigram has been attributed to William James, amongst others. One possible derivation is from the similarity to Occam's Razor. The website Status-Q (http://www.statusq.org/2001/11/26.html) attributes it to one Robert J. Hanlon who seemingly contributed it to a book about Murphy's law.

A similar quote appears in Robert Heinlein's 1941 short story "Logic of Empire": "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity." It is often asserted that the term "Hanlon's Razor" is a bastardisation of "Heinlein's Razor."

This maxim is also widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.

General observations on the predominance of human error over malice occur in various works of literature; Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) mentions: "[...] misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent."

Hanlon's Razor is a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in sig blocks, fortune cookie files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments created by well-intentioned but shortsighted people.

<FuryLord> ?
<Descent> !
[YG]Wildthing has joined the room.
- new players: server grants op status to [YG]Wildthing
<Descent> Howdy WT
<[YG]Wildthing> hi Descent
Arse has joined the room.
- new players: Congratulations on finishing the tutorial, Arse!
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<[YG]Wildthing> Arse, please look to the right ===>
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<FuryLord> I can't believe this
<[YG]Wildthing> Jon was out of control
<Descent> out of control?
<Timberwolf> He was?
<FuryLord> And that's that? What a waste of my time this has been
<FuryLord> He obliterated me without due diligence
<[YG]Wildthing> check under General, Yeah Right
Makintosh has joined the room.
- new players: Congratulations on finishing the tutorial, Makintosh!
<FuryLord> I just read it, oopp, he DID pay, whoops
<[YG]Wildthing> in cb1
<FuryLord> In USD
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<Descent> 1 question then... how did your weapon get 2m NW bigger?
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<FuryLord> I got that weapon from Holly AND 2 million also
<FuryLord> Ask her
<Descent> Is there a record of it here on CB?
<FuryLord> Or look in xfer logs
<FuryLord> Well, you COULD have looked in my xfer kogs
<Descent> I'm not accusing, I'm just asking
<FuryLord> Sale from Holly to FuryLord by Holly at January 25 2005 1:42 PM EST (0 replies) in PR
<FuryLord> "Holly sold FuryLord 2 million CB2 ($100 USD), an Assassin's Crossbow ($40 USD), and an Executioner's Sword ($30 USD). Payment made via paypal. "
<FuryLord> See what I am saying here?
<FuryLord> Nobony want to talk about it because it's not their problem I suppose...
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<Kash> heyhey
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astrokid has joined the room.
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<Descent> The Exec you got from Holly was only 1.6m when you got it... the axbow 80k. But after your transaction with SNK3R, you had over 5m NW worth of stuff....
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- new players: Welcome again, sedge
<FuryLord> I have gotten millions from many, ask lukey and others, why would I try to scan a measly 100 when I have spent literally 100s here for fujn...
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<FuryLord> Ask the people who owe as well, it's all in public record!
<sedge> hi pleb
<Pleb> hi
<FuryLord> Owe me*
<Descent> Hey, you're preaching to the choir bud. I've gotten screwed the most out of anyone on CB, guaranteed
<FuryLord> Why aren't you banned?
<Descent> Because i've been the victim, not the commiter
<FuryLord> Ditto, like I said, I was having fun
<Descent> Got scammed out of $800 USD. Then had almost 10m worth of stuff taken away on CB1 because of a "store bug"
Lymfada has joined the room.
<FuryLord> Unbelievable, and Jon didn't help or did he say you were stupid?

Jon had no obligation to help, nor did he call me stupid. I lost out because I went for a deal that seemed to good to be true. Unfortunately, it was too good to be true.

It IS his responsibility to fix and resolve bugs.

He did fix the bugs. No use talking about it now. What happened to me has nothing to do with your situation. Why even brought it up, I don't know.

Whatever, I have wasted enough time here...
Thanks everyone, I guess you don't have to pay back your loans...

And Jon, you are a [edit]

Sheesh, even if by some serious mistake he was wrong, surely you have to see that he did the only right thing, in fact letting you keep playing was a nice thing to do which he had no obligation to do.

No, he could have investigated like an intelligent programmer but he acted like what he is, lame programming [edit].

You moron.

Jonathan isn't immune to mistakes. Thread closed, for now.

Fury, you are fined 50k per nonpg word on the forums.

Total fine 100k.

This has nothing to do with what happened except for your use of nonpg on the forums. Twice.