Ban Hammer Smashes Emerald – Phox Threatens Linden Tell-All
by Pixeleen Mistral on 10/09/10 at 11:49 am
Eshi Otawara Creates Protest Nazi Deathcamp — Soviet Woodbury Celebrates
Linden Lab’s ban hammer struck the Emerald Second Life viewer Wednesday, as all versions of the formerly popular client were locked out of Philip Linden’s user-generated-content cyber paradise. Meanwhile, two high profile members of the Emerald gang – Lonely Bluebird and Arabella Steadham – discovered their accounts had been permanently terminated and Fractured Crystal has disappeared — the culmination of a slow motion train wreck that has been playing out since March.
Frei Arbeit Macht Frei
Is this the end of Emeraldgate? Perhaps not. In an exclusive interview, Lonely Bluebird (Phox) told the Herald that he plans to release what may be extremely embarrassing correspondence with the Lab, while Arabella Steadham blasted the Lab from her blog.
Ms. Steadham’s lengthy blog post warns others to exercise caution in dealing with Linden Lab saying, "DO NOT CRITICISE LINDENLAB. DO NOT WRITE YOUR THOUGHTS SO OTHERS MAY READ. DO NOT EVEN THINK ANYTHING THAT IS ANTI-LINDENLAB". After Steadham managed to disengage the caps lock key, she went on to question the viability of Second Life:
do I really want to be part of a virtual environment where lackeys of the Board of Directors hunt down those who dare to criticise? Do I want to participate in a world where users are abused by bullying standover tactics and unexplained termination of accounts? Linden Lab as a private company can create their own rules as they see fit, however to ignore at least some of the expectations we have of supposed rights if we operate by the rules- to shift the goalposts mid game – reduces their virtual world to nothing more than a game, a game where childish antics reign supreme in a desperate move to force conformity and mediocrity in an ever shrinking user base.
Eshi is very angry
Emerald developer Fractured Crystal was more circumspect and seems to have voluntarily removed his account in advance of the ban, according to his associate Lonely Bluebird (a.k.a. Phox). Several observers noticed that Fractured Crystal’s disappearance from the Second Life people list occurred last week.
Although Fractured Crystal did not respond to Herald requests for comment on Skype, Phox was gracious enough to reply to several Herald inquiries this week.
Pixeleen Mistral: I see that Fractured Crystal is no longer to be found in the SL people search
Pixeleen Mistral: but the ModularSystems alt account is still there – any idea what is going on?
_Phox: I don’t think he ever planned on using Fractured Crystal again, I wouldn’t be surprised if he cancelled the account
Apparently Phox does not plan to exit as quietly as Fractured Crystal, assuming he makes good on a promise to release selected communications between Linden Lab staff and the Emerald developers:
Pixeleen Mistral: so it looks like LL banned you
_Phox: Mhmm.
Pixeleen Mistral: did they wait until the Emerald viewer was banned or was it afterwardds?
Pixeleen Mistral: looks like they got Arabella as well
_Phox: It was pretty much simultaneous.
Pixeleen Mistral: so what is next for you?
_Phox: Well first I’m going to selectively publish a few recorded meetings, including the last one we had with Oz, as well as some other communication with LL, emails and such.
_Phox: Then move on to real life.
Pixeleen Mistral: I have had the impression for some time that there is a very interesting story to be told in the relationship between Emerald and LL
_Phox: I’ve received offers to do work for some other virtual worlds, I might look into those as well.
Pixeleen Mistral: there are plenty of virtual worlds to choose from
_Phox: That’s true.
Strong emotions were not confined to the Emerald team.
welcome to Second Life
Well-known Second Life designer Eshi Otawara protested the Lab’s actions with a Nazi death camp-themed build complete with ovens and swastika flags. The immersive new-media commentary on the Lab’s governance was eventually deleted by Linden staff – there are limits to the sorts of user generated content the Lab will tolerate – and earned Ms. Otawara a one hour suspension from the game. [UPDATE: Eshi Otawara has issued an apology for the controversial protest]
It is rumored that the artistic expression also caused Ms. Otawara’s Second Life partner to divorce her – perhaps due to the unfortunate timing of her creations’s appearance during Rosh Hashanah.
Joe Linden has a big ban hammer
The Emerald bans are the most recent chapter in an ongoing Second Life faction war that began when The Wrong Hands group turned their attention from the disgraced Justice League Unlimited to the Emerald gang – but with fortune smiling on them this week, the Woodbury faction was in a party mood.
Several YouTube videos document the NYC New Year’s Eve in Times Square style countdown-to-the-Emerald-ban party in which an effigy of the charming internet personality Prokofy Neva eats the Emerald logo.
After the magic moment passes, the Second Life equivalent of fireworks – self replicating prims – are launched as the party-people lag themselves into oblivion.
Jayd3n
Sep 12th, 2010
wow omg the new Emerald Viewer?
http://ascentviewer.com/index.php/Main_Page
Thats what my sources say.
Bubblesort
Sep 12th, 2010
@Jayd3n: I know absolutely nothing about the Ascent viewer devs, which means I’d install Emerald before trusting Ascent. At least I know that Emerald is bad and have some facts on them to judge them with. I don’t know what to think of Ascent, one way or the other, so I’ll assume the absolute worst of it until I get new information.
Until they give up something, an avatar name, a sourceforge profile, a freaking wordpress blog… something, anything, I’m not even going to consider installing it. At least with Imprudence I know people who know the people developing it.
@Intlibber: Are you denying you were a sleazy landbaron who parted old ladies and their social security checks or are you saying that you were banned for doing something else that you actually did not do?
Gundel Gaukelei
Sep 12th, 2010
@IntLibber Brautigan: What is amusing is that, unlike myself, she actually did what she is accused of doing.
Guilty of making Leni Riefenstahl turn in her grave?
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 12th, 2010
Bubblesort,
The second thing.
I confess to being a dirty jew landbaron over 53 regions, who built the largest stock exchange in SL, and helped capitalize more than 30 different businesses. I’ve made a number of contributions to SL, from advancing the state of the art in SL combat, to scripting contributions, to debugging SL in general and providing a large number of sims to the beta grid for havok4 testing.
I did not, however, copybot one of Michael Lindens nonexistent megaprims. I also did not “run the PN”, nor have I ever griefed Prokofy or anybody else in SL.
I do not regard attending publicly advertised public meetings as a member of the SL community to be “griefing” (this means attending one of Prok’s Sutherland Dam bitchfests). I also do not regard parodying someone to be “griefing”, nor is peacefully existing in one’s own sim in any way “griefing”, nor is having the first name Tizzers to be considered “griefing”.
Top Hat
Sep 12th, 2010
@IntLibber Brautigan
I confess to being a… I’ve made a number of… I did not, however, copybot… I also do not regard… I do not regard attending… I also do not regard…
Glenn Beck
Sep 12th, 2010
Jesus, I’m going to need more wine.
RevMagdalen Kyrie
Sep 12th, 2010
@IntLibber But, did you kill chickens? Chicken-related accusations are flying around the internets and people don’t know what to believe!! We deserve to know the TRUTH!!!
Ted
Sep 12th, 2010
IntLibber isn’t a griefer, he is a fraudster ripping off thousands of dollars from people in SL through various means. Playing banker being one.
Just wanted to correct the mistake of someone believing he was a griefer.
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 12th, 2010
@ At0m0 Beerbaum
Yeah, y’know, if it can give me a free trip to Hawaii every month I’m all for it. (Too bad I actually am employed, despite your baseless claims otherwise.)
@ Jayd3n & Bubblesort
If you had gone to “About Ascent” (which you clearly did not do, even though it would be the obvious thing to do when looking for any developer information) you would learn that the sole developers are Hg Beeks and Charley Levenque (a.k.a. Charlotte Wirtanen). Unlike Emerald, it has had an open depository since the beginning, and it’s already approved on the TPVD. Besides, the devs are always happy to answer questions and are usually online doing not-malicious things (unlike Phox), so I’ll trust them for the time being. (Oh, and they actually have a privacy policy! Gasp!) So, y’know, way to fail.
Jayd3n
Sep 12th, 2010
Well I never saw any Privacy Policy on their viewer, I downloaded it to check it, with no privacy policy pop up, or info on the actual program before installation, therefore there is none.
If a privacy policy is not presented by the following methods.
1. On the website which a user has to check before downloading a viewer, and agree to it.
2. On the actual program itself.
Then I assume there is no privacy policy for such, and no data is collected, therefore any complaints or violations of such go dirrectly with a report to the FTC if caught collecting information without saying there is a privacy policy when the program is downloaded, or an account registered. I am aware Linden Lab does not prompt users in their client installer, however people have to make an account, and accept a Terms OF Service/Privacy Policy there, so it makes it legal for them.
This is the only privacy policy I could find, however I was linked to a different wiki page which had the same viewer download, and did not give me any privacy policy info.
http://ascentviewer.com/index.php/Privacy_Policy
It says this.
Your Consent
By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.
So if I download their viewer or source code from anywhere else, or a friend sends it to me I did not use their site, so I did not concent to such. People sure dont seem to know much about these when it comes to legal issues.
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 12th, 2010
@ Jayd3n
That’s not how a privacy policy works. As long as it’s posted conspicuously on the site, it’s legal. Since there’s an obvious link to it under the downloads on the current main website, I would say that’s pretty conspicuous.
If someone posted a copy of it to MediaFire, you could pull the same bullshit argument that you weren’t provided with a privacy policy.
Jayd3n
Sep 12th, 2010
forgot to post this.
So if I gave you a direct setup link to the viewer, and you installed it, or gave it to a friend, and they downloaded their viewer. There is nothing on this that says anything about privacy policy either, which if the user knew nothing about such collecting it is illegal as well.
http://cloud.github.com/downloads/Beeks/Ascent/Ascent_1-4-2-3_Setup.exe
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 12th, 2010
@ Jayd3n
… which would be just what I said was a bullshit argument. Way to go.
Jayd3n
Sep 12th, 2010
Well I just think third party viewers should be required to put a button on their main screen, and installer that says Privacy Policy, and any other terms of the viewer use and such. Many viewers, in fact every illegal viewer as well do not have any privacy policy, and are allowed to connect to the Second Life grid every day. Also viewers can harm those who dont even use a viewer kinda like the Emerald was doing, where they installed stuff in their client which allowed the Emerald Developers to find anyone at any location in Second life, as long as one Emerald user was in the region with them using the sim radar to detect and send back info to their servers.
While you may think that what I say is bullshit, every game I have signed up for on the internet, Linden Lab, even world of warcraft, and older games have a privacy policy which the user must.
A. Create an account, accept terms & privacy policy.
B. Accept agreement & pirvacy policy on install.
Even Adobe software has these, they are not just located on their main page, and if their software can be hot linked by anyone, and downloaded without anyone even reading it, then people are going to assume there is no privacy policy, also their privacy policy as it says on the website that it is only for their website.
Also many Second Life viewers today do not have any way of informing a person of privacy policy changes really, so if they were to one day update their privacy policy that says, by using this viewer, you agree we can log your chat logs, and your password, this would be perfectly legal, because they downloaded the viewer, were not informed, and did not see any privacy policy on install?
Im not saying that these guys are going to do the same thing Emerald did, but I really do think that all legal viewers should be using privacy policy in their main installs, and viewer screen, and I really just dont trust the Emerald Code, because I know that Phox, and the others are back in Second Life already looking to release a new viewer again and screw everyone over, or something.
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 12th, 2010
@ Jayd3n
Cool story bro.
Lok Mistwalker
Sep 12th, 2010
@Nelson
Still waiting for you to answer my previous question regarding why skills and cds hasn’t been banned yet?
A reputable source from within Linden Lab hast just informed me that Phox, Skills, Fractured, Discrete, and all of their alt accounts (along with perhaps Arabella and some other devs, but that’s not yet verified) will be banned, and CDS will be removed from the grid by means of god deletion (i.e. CDS units will just disappear), despite the dev’s claims otherwise.
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 12th, 2010
@ Lok Mistwalker
Sorry, probably read over it. I nor the contact know when/if the rest of that will be completed (primarily Skills & CDS). I think there’s some research being done on the CDS system by the Lab, but I don’t know when/if it’ll be banned.
Bubblesort
Sep 12th, 2010
@ Jayd3n: Tell it to the opensource-dev mailing list. If you want to see an example of what is currently required by the TPV policy as far as
@ Nelson: The links to the privacy policy and about Ascent were broken when I went there earlier. Now I see the info. I haven’t decided whether or not to run it yet, but now I at least have the minimum info I need to consider it. Thanks for getting me to double check the links.
Bubblesort
Sep 12th, 2010
@ Jayd3n: sorry, typoed there, kind of, cut myself off mid sentence.
I was basically saying that Ascent follows all of the LL TPV policies as far as privacy disclosure goes, unless they are doing something they don’t disclose, but if we give them the benefit of the doubt, as far as disclosing what they need to be disclosing, that page looks legit to me.
Gundel Gaukelei
Sep 13th, 2010
@Jayd3n: Well I just think third party viewers should be required to put a button on their main screen, and installer that says Privacy Policy, and any other terms of the viewer use and such. … every game I have signed up for on the internet, Linden Lab, even world of warcraft, and older games have a privacy policy..
Oh yes, they would never dare to lie to you in a policy…
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 13th, 2010
@ Jayd3n
In addition, I think you’re confusing a contractual agreement with a company policy. A customer doesn’t have to agree with a policy, because it just exists, and generally binds the provider moreso than the customer. However, a contractual agreement, such as the SL ToS, requires a customer’s agreement (hence, you must agree to it upon your first login) for it to be enforced.
Toni Perrin
Sep 13th, 2010
Well I have just read through all the chatter about Ascent Viewer and I have downloaded it and installed it. I have been using it since last week and love the viewer, which is still in development. Very Emerald like in design with a few extras and more coming soon. I joined their group and went to their first Q&A meeting on Friday nite. The devs’ of Ascent have been very responsive in answering any questions and concerns you may have and I have been quite impressed by them. The developer of Ascent was actually the target of the DDOS attacks from Emerald Devs’ that caused their demise, for those of you who don’t know this. As for their Privacy Policy, I don’t know about all that, but they are listed on the TPV list with LL. I assume that with this latest scandel that LL has checked them out throughly before listing them. Also I have checked my files and find that they are clean as far as I can tell.
As many of you I was very disappointed in the the devs of Emerald and their unethical behavior and I certainly hope they have not done more damage that is still unknown. But I doubt that anyone in their right mind would want to go down their path right now so I trust Ascent and I am happy to have some new choices. Ascent, Pheonix, Kristens Imprudence all good choices. Bottom line I wouldn’t worry so much about Privecy Policy as they oftern times aren’t worth the paper they are written on and enjoy SL.
Toni
Jayd3n
Sep 13th, 2010
I just feel personally that all these privacy violation flags from all the Viewers, CDS, and Red Zone, have caused many problems for myself, and many other residents in SL, and I really do wish Linden Lab would take more actions to make sure that privacy can be enforced after all that has went on over the last months, and abuse by these anti theft systems, which is still being allowed too.
Also Screen Shot #2 shows CrystalShard FOO, and Gwen Carillon’s name, both Anti Copybot supporters, and both who heavily support CCA. I met them at the Step Up anti theft groups I think it was, or thats where I heard about them, I talked to both of them about Copybot, and they knew I was CDS banned, I explained why I did not trust Emerald, and the CDS system, and I was told even if I changed back to Emerald,or Regular SL that maybe Skills would remove me. They told me I had no reason that I could not trust Emerald, because it was a legit viewer, and such. But the point is, I was right about what I had told them, about Emerald, and CDS systems abuse. All of this has proven such.
So my question is when they were at the meeting at BlackLiquid, were these two supporting Emerald, or trying to make a stand for them?
–
I know that based on what I was told by CCA members, was that CDS was developed to Scare Copybotters away from creators in Second Life, and keep people from every trying a copybot viewer, but all I can say is that this system has proven too much abuse already, and while the CCA supports it, I will not due to how the system works. Also if you look at all the underground torrents, and google you can find all these new copybot viewers which offer ways to bypass CDS, and still commit thefts, there are tons of them, even some that have already been programmed with the Ascent viewer already has a copybot out for its source, and so do all the other viewers.
While these viewers may, or may not be detected by CDS at the moment, even if they are finally made to be detected, and such. Is the whole copybot war, privacy policy exploiting done by CDS, Redzone, and Emerald Developers/Onyx. Is this all worthit instead of doing things with actual evidence, or legally abuse reporting? And honestly Copybots dont care if they get CDS banned, they just use a web proxy, turn off all media, all IP logging, and come right back with fake Mac, and hardware ID’s and such. It doesnt matter to them.
I also checked out the owners profiles from this sim, and one of them was created in 2004, and the other in 2006? So they are against Emerald, or for Emerald?
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 13th, 2010
@ Jayd3n
I sure hope you’re not claiming that because a viewer has a copybot version of its source code going around that the original viewer is dangerous. That’s like saying I can draw a picture of you with a ‘stache and Nazi armbands and turn you into Hitler.
Jayd3n
Sep 13th, 2010
No im not I love Second Life open sourced, and to be honest, I love the Idea of copybot when I first found out about it. I liked having the ability to backup my own stuff. Its just that people abuse the Second Life open source from what it at one point was, and then everyone started the witch hunts on this grid, OMG we are anti copybot, we can go above the law, and accuse everyone by using CDS, and Redzone. I still like Open sourced viewers because of what everyone can do with it, even some of these illegal viewers have some better functions and scripting than Emerald did, and for that reason I like some of the features of them.
The problem is how people are doing the witch hunting in the grid. If someone has real evidence of content theft, like Snapshots of the person wearing stolen content, or proof they uploaded it on video, and such. Then they should do the following.
1. File DMCA, or contact the creator.
2. File an Abuse report.
3. Contact the person, maybe they got it as a freebie, and had no idea.
I hate the Idea of stealing from the creators on Second Life because I have watched creators build armor sets, spend weeks on designing, and one Copybotter comes up and takes all the work away in a couple of seconds.
Also I am saying that since all codes are open sourced, there will be tons of copybot viewers flying around, and right now there are lots of dedicated copybotters making copybot clients on the internet, tons of small gangs in Second Life, with no control, and for a viewer to be compiled already to cheat on with a viewer that was just released.
Bubblesort
Sep 13th, 2010
@ Toni: Hazim in involved? Hell, why didn’t somebody say so sooner? I trust him. He might have made a copybot viewer, but it was a clean copybot viewer, and I have a lot of respect for anybody who cracks encryption like he did, not once but twice, and not for malicious reasons but to expose Modular Systems abuse.
I’m in. I’m going to download it and give it a try now.
@ Jayd3n: You totally lost me. I don’t know who CCA is.
Do you really think that people actually need to follow LL’s recommendations to make a viewer? That’s crazy. There is nothing stopping people from doing whatever they want when making a viewer. The TPV policy does not govern what people can and can not create on the internet.
3rd party devs who don’t give privacy statements or reveal their virtual IDs are not breaking any rules or violating any ethical standards. I’m just saying I won’t trust people who do that. There’s a big difference between saying “I don’t trust them” and “they broke the rules.”
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 13th, 2010
@ Bubblesort
As far as I know, Toni is mistaken. Would be nice to see some chat logs or something to back that up. But then again, very little she says actually is true (Phoenix is not 100% trustworthy, for example).
Bubblesort
Sep 13th, 2010
@ Nelson: It looks like a legit claim. On the about Ascent page they list Intertia as a viewer whose dev has come to Ascent. Intertia was Hazim’s project. I mean, others did commit code, but that does make Ascent look trustworthy to me.
http://ascentviewer.com/index.php/About_Ascent
Of course, I could be totally wrong on this, but at some point I have to trust somebody. I don’t have the time to code all the things I want my computer to do myself.
roffel
Sep 13th, 2010
@ all the nice WU folk
If anyone can make any number of altar, is there any proof that the various PN accounts are not under control of any WU members?
There are more then a few (coincidental?) similarities in behaviour, building style etc between PN and WU.
And, is there any explanation why Tizzers has been proven to have been present during various raids on Mrs. C. Cat Lady by these PN accounts (by means of photographic evidence) while people have claimed she never left the WU sin and actively banned PN accounts?
You see, I want to believe, I really do, but you can understand my problem with some of these inconsistencies.
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 13th, 2010
RevMagdalene,
No, I never killed any Chickens. In fact, I gave the biggest help to the Sion Chicken community when I taught Sion himself some tricks on reducing the lag of his chickens. The low lag models all exist thanks to my advice and providing Sion with estate manager power in my sandbox so he could do further R&D.
It wasn’t until after news of my help to the chicken community spread that Prokofy Neva got jealous and started jumping into Chicken growing herself, and started spreading lies about me and my residents. Prok is the biggest liar on the grid.
Ted,
I was NOT a banker, you are a liar, sir. I ran a stock exchange, and I never stole a cent from anybody. I did take over a bank that had helped finance some of my sims, in order to rescue their depositors from insolvency. I didn’t have to, I could have let the prior owner collapse that bank. I converted that bank into a stock company on my exchange, and gave it rights to tier profits from nine of my sims. This enabled depositors in that bank to receive dividends and to liquidate their shares in a fair, market-based manner.
Before Linden Lab stole all my sims and accounts, we had bought back more than 60% of the stock in that company, and retrieved ownership of profits from 6 of the 9 sims.
We are presently seeking justice through the Evans class action suit against Linden Lab, seeking $500,000 USD in damages. When/if we win this suit, we will be dispersing funds to all of our shareholders, etc. and will use the remaining funds to launch our own virtual world that will put Second Life to shame.
Friend of all
Sep 13th, 2010
Hazim is trustworthy.
I use inertia after all.
Friend of all
Sep 13th, 2010
Dammit where is plastic duck. I want to get his word on phox’s motives.
Spitfire Clary
Sep 13th, 2010
LOL I just took a dump on Nelson Jenkins.
Then I used inertia to copybot his furry avatar.
Then I rubbed my plastic dick in his face.
Dunneh
Sep 13th, 2010
And so, it’s over. Now it’s all said and done, I kinda miss Emerald. Aww. And I didn’t even use it!
But it was so exciting for a while there! What are we going to do without Phox et al to entertain us? /sad No more emerald point videos. D:
As for Arabella, well the ‘free speech’ rant is fresh coming from her considering she ruled the Emerald blog comments form with an iron fist, and that Hazim was attacked for basically the same thing– bad mouthing Emerald. “It’s okay when we do it, but when LL does it! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”
Ah well.
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 13th, 2010
@ Spitfire Clary
Wow, how mature. What’s even funnier is that I haven’t been online in the past 2 days and I haven’t worn my furry avatar in a week.
Gaara Sandalwood
Sep 13th, 2010
Still no home net, so yeah….figured Strayn would notice and tell the rest if I mentioned that here.
Anyway, so far this still is fun to watch. heh.
Darien Caldwell
Sep 13th, 2010
@Jayd3n
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It’s better to stop theft at the source, which is copybot viewers, rather than spend all the time and effort banning and suing people for using them. If you like the features, put them in a legitimate viewer. Liking features isn’t an excuse for using software designed for theft.
jake
Sep 13th, 2010
a Linden Lab Concentration Camp as a protest for being denied use of some toy in a computer game? glad to see you all have everything in perspective
W
Sep 13th, 2010
The emerald party looked fun.
What’s with that nazi crap? Talk about offensive. Yeah, getting banned from SL for breaking policy is totally JUST LIKE the government being under the control of an insane dictator and being tortured and/or put to death for your race, sexuality or beliefs. Give me a break.
Belaya Statosky
Sep 13th, 2010
Just to clarify some confusion here:
- Ascent’s website was pushed to MediaWiki and a few things were broken during the shuffle. Apologize for not having the privacy policy page 100% available during that transition.
- Ascent is developed primarily by Hg Beeks and Charley Levenque, though I am also an official developer heading up the OS X port and have contributed small things here and there as time permits. The two screenshots Pixeleen posted, obviously, were taken by me.
- Hazim is not involved in Ascent other than he spoke to Charley and Beeks on a few details and the codebase was forked off of Inertia and made compliant. Not a very difficult task, because Inertia wasn’t that far off from compliant other than a few unrestricted features. At this point Ascent is more of a combination of several viewers than it is Inertia-like.
- The diffs between Ascent and the stock Snowglobe 1.4 base have been reviewed by Oz and Soft Linden. They actually provided a small list of things they wanted changed to be fully compliant and have been following development. Ascent has taken this one step further in the sense that at the moment there is no XML exporter at all, restricted or not. This decision was made from day one of the project to help remove any possible concerns that Ascent is a theft client.
- No one from Ascent has been DDoSed by Modularsystems. Again, that was Hazim.
Crap Mariner
Sep 13th, 2010
Feel free to stamp that rumor “CONFIRMED.”
-ls/cm
Kiddoh
Sep 13th, 2010
“If anyone can make any number of altar, is there any proof that the various PN accounts are not under control of any WU members?
There are more then a few (coincidental?) similarities in behaviour, building style etc between PN and WU.
And, is there any explanation why Tizzers has been proven to have been present during various raids on Mrs. C. Cat Lady by these PN accounts (by means of photographic evidence) while people have claimed she never left the WU sin and actively banned PN accounts?
You see, I want to believe, I really do, but you can understand my problem with some of these inconsistencies.”
That’s a rather unreasonable request. There’s no real way to prove if there aren’t/are members of the PN in WU much like how we can’t prove there are JLU or DW members in the group–even if they are, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re on our side and they usually aren’t.
There are indeed similarities in behaviors as WU and the PN don’t often have regards towards rules. The differences are that WU is generally out for having some harmless fun, where the PN are often under the impression of cause and will intentionally seek to harm who-ever’s their target.
I’m going to have to disagree with similar building styles. WU builds are generally detail obsessive, where as PN builds are generally crude and cheaply made.
In terms of Tizz being spotted at PN raids on the Crazy Cat Lady, it’s entirely possible that we have people who are friends of WU and who are also a part of Prok’s residential group and may not like Prok enough to let people in WU know that there is a show going on. If there are WU people spotted in raids, it’s generally just to watch. The most WU ever does in terms of raids, is go around in groups of themed avatars and interact with other people to see what their reactions are and we often get positive responses.
donny
Sep 13th, 2010
you are all mad.
Friend of all
Sep 13th, 2010
@spitfire grow up.Nelson is a hero for reporting shit about emerald.
Emperor Norton hears a who?
Sep 13th, 2010
You know who else compared people to the Nazis like Eshi did?
Hitler!
Thus Reductio ad Hitleruma ad Hitlerum
Toni Perrin
Sep 13th, 2010
Belaya Statosky, Thank you for your response and clarification. I hope that puts things into perspective for those of you that are concerned about the Ascent Viewer. I have no affiliation with Ascent other then I am a user and think it’s a good viewer and I wish it to succeed.
Bubblesort, I completely agree with you regarding Pheonix. Since so many of the ModSys team members are involved with Pheonix I have to wonder what did they know and when did they know it? That said I have used it and most likely will use it when necessary. Otherwise I use Ascent. But if you read my post again, I never said it was trustworthy, just that it is a good option for the ex-Emerald users that are looking for a replacement.
Friend of all
Sep 14th, 2010
Who knows, I heard Jay is working on Phenoix.
Dave Bell
Sep 14th, 2010
Why am I getting the feeling that some people involved with the Alphaville Herald are looking for a new Big Bad, so they can carry on being shocked at events in Second Life?
Emerald has been such a good thing for them.
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 16th, 2010
Dave Bell,
You are absolutely correct. Uri, Pix, Tizzers and I will be judging submissions from groups that would like to be featured as the New Axis of Evil in SL. Please submit your spell corrected applications to Pix with the names of all key players, their nicknames, alts, and their roles in the group, the full name of the group and any nicknames you would like to be known by, a description of the origination of the group and what activities you engage in which will outrage the community enough to lead to your eventual mass banning.
We will be producing a machinima tv show titled “SL’s Got BAWWW!!!” that the top submissions will be invited to participate in.
archie
Sep 20th, 2010
Emerald was a brilliant viewer – but the silly buggers had to play, well Silly Buggers.
So I guess the most silly of them will now find nasty things to do instead as revenge – pity.
Why not enable world peace – at least that way someone will remember your name after you are dead, this time….