Emerald Viewer Mutiny – Fractured Crystal Thrown To Sharks
by Pixeleen Mistral on 23/08/10 at 4:35 am
Second Life Emerald Viewer + DDOS Platform Ownership Changes Hands
The scandal-plagued Emerald viewer development team has undergone radical change with the resignation of Fractured Crystal Sunday morning. Although Mr. Crystal had previously controlled the web site distributing the Emerald viewer, he was forced out in what appears to have been a mutiny by other Emerald team members during the last 24 hours.
Fractured Crystal now swims with the sharks
Trouble stared with revelations that the viewer was being used for a distributed denial of service attack on a rival web site – an attack that accounted for approximately 800 gigabytes of traffic on the iheartanime.com site, accord to Hazim Gazov. Denial of service attacks are a violation of the Linden Lab third party viewer policy – and illegal in the United States, where Mr. Crystal resides.
Attempts to spin the attack as childish shenanigans by Arabella Steadham – who reminds us she does not lie – fell flat, and as word spread and alarmed players uninstalled the Emerald software. With the Emerald’s initial PR efforts failing to quiet the public outcry, there was a clear need for more radical action than opaque assurances that a team member had been “disciplined”.
What followed was apparently a game of chicken within the development team. Arabella Steadham told the Herald she and other members quit and began plans to start an independent effort. Shortly afterward, Fractured Crystal posted his resignation, saying, “I am not attempting to justify my mistakes, merely to explain them. As you might guess, if anyone else had done this, it would be unforgivable, and the same applies to me… I am voluntarily removing myself from the project. I will be transferring control of the primary webserver to Arabella Steadham as soon as is possible”.
As of this writing, the Emerald viewer is no longer listed on the Linden Lab third party viewer page – but why? I contacted Emerald developer Skills Hak for comment:
Pixeleen Mistral: I understand you asked to have Emerald removed from the third party viewer directory – can you explain why?
Skills Hak: because it was registered to fractured
Skills Hak: and we asked fractured to step down
Pixeleen Mistral: so this has nothing to do with being out of compliance with the TPV policy?
Pixeleen Mistral: its just a name transfer?
Skills Hak: probably a bit of both, LL isn’t happy at all of course
Skills Hak: well we kind of booted fractured
Skills Hak: bought a new server, domain
Skills Hak: restructuring everything atm
Skills Hak: i bought the sim and he oficially resigned
Pixeleen Mistral: what will the new domain be?
Skills Hak: not sure if i can say that yet :p
Pixeleen Mistral: so you now own Emerald Point?
Skills Hak: tomorrow probably
Pixeleen Mistral: oh yeah – the transfer would take some time
Skills Hak: why waste a good sandbox
Pixeleen Mistral: any idea when Emerald might get back on the TPV list?
Skills Hak: no idea, that’s up to Joe [Linden] and the rest, if at all
Pixeleen Mistral: right – Soft Linden sounded concerned on the mailing list entry I saw – the DDOS is an open and shut case for a violation
Skills Hak: yeah understandably
Skills Hak: >.>
I asked Arabella Steadham how she ended up with the modularsystems web site, and a picture of hardball negotiations within the team emerges.
Pixeleen Mistral: so I am under the impression that you *did* quit or threaten to quit at some point, but then Fractured gave in
Arabella Steadham: no, let me tell you the events in order
Arabella Steadham: I left the EMDEV team last night
Arabella Steadham: I advised Treet tv I could not do the interview on this basis
Arabella Steadham: paisley [Paisley Beebe - Tweet TV personality] twitted that, which is probably where Tateru heard
Arabella Steadham: Apparently following my departure, most of the remainder of the team also left
Arabella Steadham: shortly after this, a very small group of us met to see what we could do
Arabella Steadham: about 2 hours after that, jay [Fractured Crystal] made his post
Arabella Steadham: I am now doing the treet thing again
Pixeleen Mistral: so effectively nearly everyone left and marrooned Fractured, then he gave in
Pixeleen Mistral: now the contradictory posts are making sense
Arabella Steadham: the thing is, there are only so many hours in the day, waking hours. We are scattered across the globe too, so not all is always coordinated. what seems like a smooth trail of events to me can easily look disjointed to others
Arabella Steadham won’t lie, but will remain pseudonymous – now do you trust her viewer?
Ms. Steadham was interviewed on Treet TV this evening, but was unwilling to provide real life contact information for herself or other members of the Emerald team, claiming that Linden Lab knows who she is and that is good enough. But will this restore player trust in Emerald?
The most interesting dialog is over the next few days is likely to be inside Linden Lab as the game gods consider whether the Emerald viewer will make it back onto the third party viewer page – or if the viewer should be blocked from access to Second Life.
Restoring the Lab’s trust in the shamed development group may be difficult, particularly when Emerald developer Lonely Bluebird refuses to acknowledge that the attack on the iheartanime.com site was a DDOS attempt – as was the case in group chat after the Treet TV event. A lack of action on the part of the Lab would render the Third Party Viewer policy toothless, but forcing users to change viewers could result in more departures from the Philip Linden’s walled garden of cyber delights – a serious issue for player retention. Caught on the horns of this dilemma, will Lab decide that the Emerald viewer is simply "too popular to fail"?
Kiwi
Aug 23rd, 2010
I like how, in the Treet show today, one of the developers mentioned that there are no longer malicious (Or “People with griefer or hacker backgrounds” as they put it) people left on the team. I find it funny that they make this claim, yet Phox is still on the team. Last I had checked, he was just a tad bit worse than our friendly DDoS-inducer, Fractured.
Jayd3n
Aug 23rd, 2010
If you seriously believe Skills Hak, or any other Emerald Team Developer, I say dont, here is what will happen.
Fractured Crystal is known as Jcool410 a copybotter, most woodbury and others know this.
Skills Hak made CDS, bans anyone they want without reason from their system include people who have done nothing wrong, and abuse CDS, Plus people who have logged into a viewer not authroized by Emerald team where they had full control over the system.
Skills Hak, nor Emerald can be trusted if you believe Fractured is stepping down think again.
Down the road they will Register new accounts, and go right back to the team, and deny it…
Dont Trust Skills Hak or emerald. Nuff Said.
Patasha
Aug 23rd, 2010
I’m kind of taken aback with the way they seem to think that they are calling all the shots as far as if they are going to be allowed to continue to remain part of SL.
I would hope that LL makes some official statement of sanctions against the Emerald Team.
Given the attitudes presented by the management, I would think a decision by LL to ban Emerald would be appropriate, given that those managing the development just do not appreciate the severity of what has happened and how those actions have damaged LL’s customer confidence. This is not only about Emerald’s reputation, but LL’s as well.
I, for one, am growing tired of SL’s continued de-evolution into a platform where the idea of a virtual community is contantly being overshadowed by people wanting to demonstrate their uber leet coding tricks and users having their loyalty to SL exploited for juvenile pranks.
Jayd3n
Aug 23rd, 2010
Oh yeah I forget to mention that while CDS detected my illegal Client at one time because I do not trust Emerald, and was not using that client, but another a friend gave for me, and its the reason I am CDS banned from hundreds of Simulators, I was right, Emerald has done many wrong things to the community, and Skills Hak has the nerve to try to take control over Emerald + CDS, that is too much power in one persons hands. While my main account was CDS banned, two other alts were banned because Skills Hak Logs IP Addresses on outside webservers and denys it to the public. This was used to ban two of my alts who used nothing but standard Second Life.
So If Linden Lab even thinks about allowing Emerald back on to the TPVP List or recommending such a viewer, so help me god… You guys Skills Hak, and the rest of Emerald are destroying Second Life worse than the copybotters were, Your Systems, and projects have not protected any creators.
Let me tell you that your Projects have helped me learn even more about content theft, I can walk into any store right now, copybot everything sim wide, log every asset key, walk out undetected by your system, throw away my account, and the creator is harmed a hell of a lot, I can buy products on xstreet and still do this, Your system doesnt protect but it keeps the Second Life Economy from running.
If you are going to run such a system, Public Database needs to be made public, with absolute evidence of people copybotting, not just a string of text, if you cannot prove such then there shouldnt be anyone being abused by your piece of shit system.
Hope this helps.
Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia
Aug 23rd, 2010
The new site is emeraldviewer.net, according to Jessica.
Jessica also said that, “Linden Lab removed the viewer from the third party directory. We did expect this would happen, and we have provided the lab with information regarding our new changes…”
Later on she said the lab removed the viewer because of the DDOS attack, and that, “I don’t blame Linden Lab for removing the viewer from the third party directory at all.”
It’s all in the interview: http://api.treet.tv/media/tonightlive_emerald_127_22aug10.mp3
The emerald dev team is still lying to everybody… again. They never asked LL to remove the viewer from the list. LL removed it because it is malware.
Little Lost Linden
Aug 23rd, 2010
oh the humanity!!
http://thebotzone.net/2010/08/22/beware-an-emerald-in-the-rough/
Hitler would be proud of this chaos.
The number of crazy things happening in SL has been at an all time high this year. All one can really say to all this is Holy Moly.
BEWARE: DDoS – An Emerald in the Rough! «
Aug 23rd, 2010
[...] People are dropping this viewer in droves and with very good reason. Today it was announced Fractured Crystal, the creator of the Emerald DDoS proof of concept hack is stepping down from the project, Emerald [...]
Kiddoh
Aug 23rd, 2010
I think one thing Emerald needs to learn is that stating something as fact does not make it a fact.
One Song
Aug 23rd, 2010
Skills is Fracturd. Case closed. If you think anything is different think again. Skills is a thieving cunt bitch. That whole sim needs to go the way of woodbury. Griefers call to arms. Never let up! FUK SKILLS and all the rest better leave fast cause the shit is now going down.
ll hacked my account. It’s why I don’t answer. And I won’t start now.
K.T.D.
Aug 23rd, 2010
Simply removing Fractured does not make the viewer trustworthy. As long as Skills and Phox are still involved with the project, there’s reason enough not to trust it.
Rob "N3X15" Nelson
Aug 23rd, 2010
Knowing Frac, he’s still got an account in the SVN and an alt in the sim. Nothing will change.
Billy
Aug 23rd, 2010
phox get him out and out fast, it was him that released the copybot, also he was one of the ppl behind the 2005 lindenlabs seever hack which forced LL to reset everyones passwords
Jayd3n
Aug 23rd, 2010
Agreed I know JCool/Fractured has many alternate accounts. And they are really not restructure they just lie to people to make the community happy while they continue to grief and their illegal operations with Skills Hak who is god because he owns 5 insilico regions… And Linden Lab wont ban him for disturbing the peace.
Jayd3n
Aug 23rd, 2010
forgot to say that from what I heard Emerald Project was all Fractured Crystals/Jcool’s Idea, do you honestly think they would abandon that?
Zidonuke
Aug 23rd, 2010
EMKDU @ mirror.modularsystems.sl/emerald/EMEXT_WIN.7z is using ECC Public Key Encryption. They will not stop.
We
Aug 23rd, 2010
It seems unlikely that Fractured is just going to come back on an alt, from all indications, the rest of the team is legitimately pissed at him, and he didn’t resign, he was kicked out.
However, it’s true. Emerald will never be completely trustworthy so long as Ph0x is around. I was pretty shocked they wanted to keep him on.
Gundel Gaukelei
Aug 23rd, 2010
s/Fractured/ Skillz/
What’s in a name?
At0m0 Beerbaum
Aug 23rd, 2010
“It seems unlikely that Fractured is just going to come back on an alt, from all indications, the rest of the team is legitimately pissed at him, and he didn’t resign, he was kicked out.”
At least, to the public eye.
Given their behavior in reaction to this, they probably arent that pissed off.
It’s all PR, and within the next few weeks, a new “promising coder” or a new ex-linden will join the team and make great strides, and they will be even sneakier than before.
They probably are pissed at him a bit for blowing their cover.
But you know what? We called it on 4/19, told Soft Linden and Joe Linden that this exact thing would happen, after The Wrong Hands group had infiltrated and found damning evidence of their foul play.
Then later that day, the emerald devs started crashing our sims almost non-stop, and when I was actually present when they did this (I was on for about an hour) one said “yeah, goodbye woodbury, no one will miss you.” and crashed the sim.
Funny enough he somehow bypassed the estate ban list.
Then the next day, everything got nuked.
Now Soft Linden is one of the people decrying the Emerald Client and the whole dev team.
I hope Soft loses his job for catering to these people.
I’m happy to see that these fuckers got what’s coming to them, I lost all of my shit because of them, and Linden Labs can thank them for permanently losing a customer over them.
But hey, I can thank them at the same time, because my life has been much better without SL
Gee, should have done that shit when
bob
Aug 23rd, 2010
I hate drama alphaville herald can go fuck it’s self I still trust Emerald. this is all a big todo about prity much nothing.
Noisey
Aug 23rd, 2010
“Ms. Steadham was interviewed on Treet TV this evening, but was unwilling to provide real life contact information for herself or other members of the Emerald team, claiming that Linden Lab knows who she is and that is good enough.” – Pixeleen Mistral
I was a long time Emerald user but am now learning to use Imprudence because of all this BS starting with the resignation of LGG which made me sit up and listen but come on Pixeleen… tell the story, avoid the gameplay.
There was a time when YOU didn’t want your personal RL info given out either and probably for good reason.
I know I don’t want to.
So the above quote is not necessary IMO as there is already enough shit to stick to the EmDev team without adding your own bias’ – no matter how many times they killed you
Scree Raymaker
Aug 23rd, 2010
Anyone else find it funny that on their site they say the member involved was disciplined (Shenanigans post) then resigned when everyone started posting how pissed off they were? Surely they should’ve booted Fractured at the first sign of any trouble, not after a huge amount of damage had been done to Emerald’s reputation.
It seems they’ll only do the right thing if they’re going to get bad press otherwise, and for that reason they can’t be trusted.
LL needs to block Emerald from accessing SL and ban everyone associated with Emerald development. If they can’t prevent one of their own from doing something like this then none of them can be trusted.
Charity Stohr
Aug 23rd, 2010
We are at war with Eurasia, we’ve always been at war with Eurasia. East Asia is out ally!
There are no good Emerald Developers. None. The last good one left. What the new ex-lindens will do if they stick around is yet to be seen. However given the fact that LL is just as if not more aware off all the dirty little tricks Emerald has been up to makes me question the integrity of those Lindens to decide to join them rather then accommodating their crap for a popular viewer keeping them afloat. ph0x is a fuck face. He is still on his little mission to find out where Hazim Gazov lives so he can break in and steal his computer and I’m supposed to believe he’s one of the trustworthy ones? Skills Hak and other Emerald devs also like to add people to CDS to punish their enemies even if they never had a copybot. If you wanna get people who copybot, add ph0x and jcool who BOTH DEVELOPED COPYBOT VIEWERS!
As for Arabela, she’s a lying cunt. Her record reflects this. Her lies are inconsistent especially when explaining her inconsistencies.
John Life Smith
Aug 23rd, 2010
Linden labs needs to Ban the use of Emerald.
The Entire Emerald team needs to be held accountable for using the end users machines to perform a DDOS attack on one person.
This is Illegal and Legal action should be taken againt Emerald Development team.
Linden Labs needs to get a clue and start actually making sure that the 3rd party viewers they say are ok to use can be validated all the code. And when a development team abuses the trust of the end users they should be removed and their Second life accounts and regions stripped from them.
All you people who still trust Emerald are fooling your selves when this happens again and your ISP shuts down your Internet cause your Machine is spamming a website in A DDOS attack who will you cry too then?
This was Illegal and unless you put your foot down now and leave emerald it will happen again. As people say their are other more trusted viewers around.
Charity Stohr
Aug 23rd, 2010
@bob
You’re right. Breaking federal law is nothing really. Not like anyone has to pay bandwidth overage fees. Also you have a ‘prity’ good spelling.
V
Aug 23rd, 2010
Dunno if this comment will make it through on the emerald blog, so I might as well repost it here:
There are several questions that remain unanswered:
First of all, does this new proposed “transparency” also mean that unpleasant comments or forum postings will stop getting censored? Then: Will you or Fractured apologize and compensate the victim of the DDoS attack? Why did no other Emerald developer notice what was done or speak up against these intransparent practices before? If you’re continuing to use emkdu, how can you do that since Fractured bought the license? Also, speaking of money, who will handle and oversee donations and money transactions now? Will you make the distribution and handling of money public and transparent? Is the emerald team still working on Onyx or similar projects? If Skills Hak is part of the “head” of Emerald now, what’s the relation to CDS and Gemini Industries? Since Arabella Steadham said she’ll be accountable for Emerald now, how can she take that responsibility when obviously there is no way to control what coders do within the team? And, just for my own curiousity: Why did Arabella resign first, THEN push Fractured to resign and THEN take over lead of the new Emerald team?
Meh
Aug 23rd, 2010
This is a big pissing contest.
a) I think it’s a pretty broad statement to say that there are no trustworthy Emerald developers.
b) Hazim has a history of hacking web sites, not just exploiting a bug and accidentally grabbing something, but really drilling into them and hacking them and stealing information he has no right to. I feel no particular pity for him for what happened to him. He deserves a lot worse.
c) Even in light of a) above, the operating model of Modular Systems is sufficiently flawed that the chance for any sort of recovery for them is not possible. This is what happens when people are given power without responsibility.
d) I’m just amazed that Woodbury is still trying to claim the high ground here. You’re not going to make anyone believe that hacking into other people’s servers and breaking the law for ANY reason is going to make you decent people, and you deserved your mass banning and your lands taken away, and a lot worse than that. If Fractured belongs in jail, then so do you lot.
e) If Emerald is forbidden to connect to Second Life, it will be because the developers can’t be trusted not to do things like what Hazim and Fractured did to each other – not because they’re bad people, but because Hazim and Fractured got busy in an ePenis war and didn’t care who else they hurt in the process.
Jayd3n
Aug 23rd, 2010
Who is Hazim anyways, I dont think I know that person, but I checked his website, and even if he was working on a illegal viewer, he did not deserve to get DDOS attacked. It was illegal for people to do and against the law.
Jayd3n
Aug 23rd, 2010
Oh nevermind I know who he is now. Yeah Too stupid to have seen his full SL name lol.
Well anyways, to Hazim im sorry for my part in DDOS on your website. I had No idea my Emerald Client was doing this… (Huggs)
Anyways Woodbury I dont really know what happend to fully get them all banned, I miss woodbury for the Lulz in Second Life. They did some pretty unique things, had Freedom OF Speech there, and for that I loved it. All I know is that Emerald had something to do with it, but not that they actually did anything in Second Life to have it comming.
Kae
Aug 23rd, 2010
Hazim, formerly known as CrawlingIn Meskin, was a Woodbury member who originally had aspirations to join the Emerald team, but ended up not doing so for various reasons.
He was involved with the hacking of the ModSys website, at least as far as exposing jcool410′s data mining and releasing of the Onyx SVN snapshot.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but regardless, while Hazim is not an innocent in all of this (I highly doubt he would classify himself as such anyway, let’s not make him into some martyr), he is a victim in a strict sense of the DDoS attack– just as ModSys was the victim of the hacking of their website.
Legal action and whatever else for remuneration is just silly to suggest unless there is some serious financial damages to Hazim, and he has stated that he’s not interested in taking anyone to court anyway. I haven’t seen him come out and say that he will be getting charged any overage fees either (I’m guessing he has an “unlimited bandwidth” plan).
Meh is right about not all the developers of Emerald being untrustworthy as well. A lot of people don’t understand this but Emerald was/is not a heavily structured project. Just because jcool, Phox, and Cryo are on the same project as the other contributors, does not mean that they’re conspiring together or working on the same projects (the majority of Emerald contributors have never touched Onyx or emkdu.dll for that matter).
It’s a bit unreasonable to paint everyone with the same brush just because they didn’t bother to clean up another script kiddie’s messes, when said person did it in their own back yard on their own server with their own money.
Dude
Aug 23rd, 2010
May I ask, why all of you, the reporters, in these past days’ articles, are neglecting to report all those other schemes of those Emerald people that you were so vocal about some months ago ? For example the using the viewer to feed databases with user names and IP addresses which is equally big an issue. You seem to have “forgotten” all these things along with the people involved who will seemingly carry on with the viewer and their schemes after this little show with their scapegoat “shenanigan”. Am I the only one under this impression? Your fellow pigs, the real life reporters do this. Constantly in bed with the “shenaningans”, giggling in the interviews, playing with our short-term memories.
Kiddoh
Aug 23rd, 2010
Oioi~ should I remind people that all WU did was pass around the information Hazim recovered and was not behind the actual hacking? ;o
John Life Smith
Aug 23rd, 2010
regardless of what has happen in past…
This is a bigger issue cause it has made everyone of their users part of the Petty war that was waged.
Yes I think the development team is to be held accountable for this mess, it is the responsability of the team to check the code and make sure that their own people are not using it maliciously.
and Linden Labs should start reviewing what they actually allow.
The should Ban the use of Emerald and until Emerald can prove they have no malicious code and have ways that Lindens can verify this, then allow it back in. If i was emeralds “new” team i would change the name. and rebuild a good reputation.
Patasha
Aug 23rd, 2010
@Dude
All the articles are tagged. If a person is interested about more deatail about a subject they can click the tag and be awash with the history of a subject. I would imagine Pix has been blogging long enough she probably has a good idea on what a good article length is and what gets into tl;dr land.
There is more than enough gory details of this latest event to fill three articles by her, if she rehashed all the team’s previous issues it would be hours of reading.
J
Aug 23rd, 2010
Woodbury University, which was a completely harmless group compared to people like Phox, Fractured and Skills, was unjustly banned from Second Life because one of their members was involved in exposing Emerald abuse similar to what has been uncovered recently. Instead of banning the abusers, Emerald, a group consisting solely of anonymous permabanned griefers, Linden Lab banned the whistleblowers, Woodbury University, a group representing a real life university, and in revenge even a bunch of people who had never done anything wrong nor were involved in the uncovering of Emerald abuse, people who just happened to be members of Woodbury University.
Linden Lab owes Woodbury University an apology and compensation. Any serious company would ban the Emerald griefing and hacking group and anyone affiliated with it by now, and apologize to the RL university they caused damages. But Linden Lab isn’t a serious company, as we all know. They’re as serious as Phox.
Persephone Bolero
Aug 23rd, 2010
I remain undecided.
Judge Joker
Aug 23rd, 2010
@bob
“I hate drama alphaville herald can go fuck it’s self I still trust Emerald. this is all a big todo about prity much nothing.”
Your precocious little Emerald too big to fail? give em a bail out you schmuck, I’m guessing you’re the kind of guy who reply’s to Nigerian Email Scams.
Hope you come to your senses, but let Linden Labs know if you need any help, when you end up scammed for L$’s or having your bank details exposed or god forbid involved without your knowledge in a “pseudo” script kiddies DDoS attack.
But wait you actually are happy to take part in that? and be used?
so it pretty much shows how brain dead you are, if your practically banging down their door to take part in something illegal in return for what?
Is Second Life worth that much to you that you just can’t suffer a little with SL2 or another viewer, when it’s pretty obvious to almost everyone else your being taken for a ride?
If your that easy to exploit, please send a 10$ payment fee to fucktard@bob.scam and we’ll send you the link to download our premium grade fuckware, which we know you just can’t live without.
Dude
Aug 23rd, 2010
@Patasha
Just to keep the sarcasm on for a while more: Yes, too many big huge issues at one time are too much for us sheep-news-consumers eh? For example, the Paisley interview. Wouldn’ t you like to hear her bombard that spokeswoman with tons of questions regarding these past months’ dirty laundry ?
I am too harsh of course. Taking in account the lame and generic nature of that show, she actually did a decent job. So I end my sarcasm.
I will only add that I’d love the articles being constantly being flavoured with loud and clear explicit references and hints to the past months’ feats of those jerks. I don’t mind repetition. I was actually expectant of it but they seem to be lacking. I feel depraved of the full taste. I have not read not one single hint to the IP address logging issue. Not one. And that short term memory reporting is typical of “real world” “journalism”. Let me not elaborate on this last one.
Meh
Aug 23rd, 2010
Linden Lab owes Woodbury nothing, since they did not, in fact, represent the real life university but instead were the plaything of one rogue professor seeking to make a name for himself and write a book on virtual worlds. The real university actually had no idea they were even being represented in Second Life until it was pointed out to them. The letter of authorization Foxchase posted from the University was a fraud, since the University did not know that the group was officially banned from operating as an educational institution by Linden Lab and persona non grata in Second Life at the time.
Woodbury was not banned for being whistleblowers. They were banned and all their sims seized, not once, but TWICE, for being the hub of nearly all the griefing activity on Second Life, and it was the worst kept secret on the grid. Woodbury was also home to hackers and content thieves, and the PN who moved among them freely and unchallenged.
Again, the worst kept secret on the grid.
“La guerra dei viewer” Emerald rimosso dall’elenco dei viewer accettati « VIRTUAL WORLDS MAGAZINE
Aug 23rd, 2010
[...] . Conclusione nella pagina dei viewer “compliant” della linden (pare per via di richiesta ufficiale dei programmatori di emerald che si sono dissociati) Emerald è sparito [...]
We
Aug 23rd, 2010
Woodbury shouldn’t hold their breath on getting any apologies. Not that they don’t deserve one, but LL is just never gonna acknowledge they did anything so horrifically shitty to protect even more shitty people.
@Kae
The three main developers in Emerald before the “restructuring” were all the three main developers on Onyx: Jcool, Ph0x, and Skills. Of those 3, only one of which won’t be in the “new” team (being Fractured as it seems he was literally forced off the team). Ph0x also was one of the people who had direct control over what happened with the emkdu.dll, and the person who continued to lie about it being fixed while simply just increasing the encryption.
People generally agreed that not all Emerald devs were bad, the two people that they accredited to this were LordGreggreg and Chalice Yao, who both left Emerald in disgust.
The new team includes people like Ph0x, who’s background is in griefing and ripping, and routinely brags in voice about how he burglarizes his neighbors in real life. And people like Arabella, who control the comments on the blog and post outright falsehoods like “This is not a DDoS”. Even the technically-retarded host of that SL TV Show knew enough to not buy the bullshit story that it was “boasting” and it wasn’t considered a DDoS.
As long as the new team has people like this, nothing will change with them, it’ll only be a matter of time before the next Emerald drama pops up.
Kiddoh
Aug 23rd, 2010
@Meh: I’m typing this from my Woodbury dorm that was paid for by the scholarship I received from WU. The scholarship titled “SL Scholarship” it’s worth $2500. :>
Also; please explain how you would “know” these things. Last I check WU was fully aware they were being represented in SL. That’s why we had a sim in the first place. The reason Tizz provided an authorization letter was because you tin-foil hat junkies couldn’t possibly believe that a real University would have anyone who wouldn’t support Kalel Venkaman’s psychopathic attempt to enforce his perception of the rules in SL.
Oh, and by the way:
” Woodbury was also home to hackers and content thieves, and the PN who moved among them freely and unchallenged.”
The PN gave Tizz money they had stolen from Angel Fluffy’s account, and you know what Tizz did? He refused it and reported them and that’s why our sim crashed multiple times a day since then. Even before the second time our sims were seized we actively banned anyone who griefed our sim.
Perhaps it’s time you take off your tinfoil hat?
II Singh
Aug 23rd, 2010
@Meh I’ll have what you are smoking. Seems better than the average ditch-weed.
If you want the serious drugs you should check out the crazy cat lady’s rag. She claims all programmer (legit and hacker) are agnostics and athiests and that is why we have this emerald debacle.
She must be on the pure H.
Crackpots, malcontents and trolls oh my…………………….
To beat the continual droning thread here……
Do you know who else was on serious drugs???
Hitler!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Actually that is historically true)
Jayd3n
Aug 23rd, 2010
Skills Hak Needs to be permently banned from Second Life, the only reason he is not, is because no one out there has the moeny to lawsuit him, If I did I would sue him right now, for false DMCA on my videos against his system, Trying to disrupt freedom of speech, violation of my first amendment rights. I would sue him for spyware, and International law violations.
Seriously someone needs to stand up to this dirtbag who is a rich person.
As for the rest of Emerald I think they were trying to keep all their illegal operations underground so no one knew, but the idiot kid JCool made it public, and they public found out due to his actions, so they either Fired him for real, and took over to correct the mistakes and continue their illegal actions within SL god knows they probabily copybot themselves from other creators using other peoples names, and use CDS to make it look like they are angels. It is the Ultimate plan. OR they said JCool, You have been kind to us, we are sorry for this, but we have to kill your main account here, we will invite you in a few months to a year with your alt account, just dont tell anyone.
Woodbury did not deserve to be banned, I think Linden Lab should give us freedoms, if we want to Spam objects all over our own region, or Shoot bullets everywhere anthing we wish other than 100% crashing it on purpose that we should be able to say whatever the F we please, and do as we please. But they dont people still file abuse reports in private regions.
John Life Smith
Aug 23rd, 2010
It still amazes me that People don’t get what Emerald did as Illegal and say ohhh bad boy don’t do it again…
LInden Lab needs to remove Emerald they removed Woodbury Emerald did far far worse, in my opinion they crossed many many boundries by involving all their users in a get back scheme.
Linden Labs do what is right remove Emerald and their SIM and make sure when it comes back you KNOW what is in it.
J
Aug 23rd, 2010
“since they did not, in fact, represent the real life university but instead were the plaything of one rogue professor”
That’s a contradictory claim. You admit the group was supervised by the dean of the School of Media, Culture & Design at Woodbury University (Prof. E. Clift), who has on occasions given interviews on his school’s involvement with SL, yet you claim they had no affiliation with the School of Media, Culture & Design at Woodbury University because the dean was somehow a “rogue professor”(!)?
“Woodbury was not banned for being whistleblowers.”
Yes, they were. Even Prokofy admits it.
“They were banned [...] for being the hub of nearly all the griefing activity on Second Life”
I saw very little griefing there. Your claim is really hilarious. There are numerous griefing groups in Second Life. They weren’t banned, so the Woodbury ban had nothing to do with griefing. This year, Emerald has spammed countless sims with hundreds of bots collecting information about LL’s customers, and done other things that threaten the privacy of thousands of LL customers, with no response from LL. The only notable thing Woodbury University has done in the last year or so was exposing that kind of abuse by Emerald and similar abuse by the JLU griefing group. When the group has been tolerated for years, owned several simulators and then suddenly is banned for no apparent reason other than some of it’s member exposing Emerald abuse (while far worse “griefing groups” are not banned), it has nothing to do with griefing.
“Woodbury was also home to hackers and content thieves, and the PN who moved among them freely and unchallenged.”
Er, no, the Woodbury sim was regularly attacked and crashed by the PN. PN members trying to crash the sim were banned on sight. And btw., the entire Emerald development team, simulator and groups are home to hackers and content thieves. Yet, they weren’t banned.
Admiral Tojo
Aug 23rd, 2010
Shite…
Does this mean all the Emerald fanbois and diehards are going to come running to Imprudence? Is Imprudence not going the be the best-kept secret on the grid anymore???
Emerald is bloated, fat, crashy… yeah, I only speak for myself. Imprudence has practically all the same features but feels nimble and light. Snappy.
Makes me wonder how much undercover code is crammed into Emerald that only the devs and their friends know how to activate that basically give them some kind of God mode on the grid.
Not accusing. Just suspecting.
hobo kelly
Aug 23rd, 2010
Pixeleen you rock I reckon
General Drama
Aug 23rd, 2010
I’d advise everybody to not put any trust in a developer team led by someone who refuses to disclose their identity. They have access to a lot of info on the RL identities of thousands of their users, it is only proper that with responsibility for that data, that team leaders should demonstrate similar transparency and openness. It is only with such openness can the users hold team leaders accountable should the team become corrupted again.
And yeah, Woodbury has been vindicated, LL needs to give Woodbury back its sims, and restore the members to their accounts.
Nelson Jenkins
Aug 23rd, 2010
@ General Drama
They won’t. Stop whining. It’s over.
The Horse's Mouth
Aug 24th, 2010
Woodbury: Dear Linden Lab, we would like to work with you and take the right steps towards having an amiable relationship with the lab.
Linden Lab: Fantastic! You will be working with Loki Clifton through the solutions provider program and will be eligible for the educational discount.
Woodbury: Great. We would like to purchase two more sims!
Linden Lab: Not a problem. Enjoy!
Woodbury: Dear Joe and Soft Linden, look at all of this incriminating evidence against Emerald!
Linden Lab: Oh this is horrible! We will definitely look into it!
Linden Lab (Behind closed doors): “Shit! If this information gets out it will potentially damage our relationship with the most popular 3rd party viewer developers! 2.0 was a flop and we need Emerald!”
Linden Lab: Dear Woodbury, we regret to inform you that you are no longer welcome in Second Life. Have a nice life.
Woodbury: Fuck that noise, release the evidence anyway.
Emerald: *RAGE*
Emerald: Oh hi, we’re in your website DDOS’ing it.
Woodbury: @LindenLab Told you so.
Linden Lab: Get Emerald off the TPV list!
What’s next?