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"?
Alexa Sharpshire
Sep 1st, 2010
I love Emerald Viewer and if Linden Labs discontinues access to second life through Emerald Viewer i will no long participate in SL.
viewer 2.0 sucks.
Willard47
Sep 1st, 2010
Alexa
Secondlife Viewer 2 as it is known has been updated to 2.1.0 which is much better than 2.0 in my opinion. I was using Emerald but when I heard that it contained malcious code I uninstalled it. I do not support or encourage the work of people who think they can do what they like without any kind of recrimination or have sympathy with anyone who knowingly or unknowingly supports them. You are obviously only interested in persuing your own selfish interests which is not the sort of thing that will be missed in secondlife so good luck to you.
Emerald Gang Implodes – Viewer Ban Hammer Next? | The Alphaville Herald
Sep 1st, 2010
[...] and Lonely Bluebird (a.k.a. Phox) from the development team – previously Fractured Crystal resigned from the [...]
history
Sep 7th, 2010
Wow, I’m amazed that the Emerald shit has only now really hit the fan, and perplexed that there are still people dumb (or indifferent) enough to use it. I had uninstalled their viewer months prior to the whole 8P logging story came out, on the advice of a close (rl) friend. He warned me about these very things being implemented in the viewer, and I trusted him because he was closely involved with the dev team and knows his stuff when it ‘ones to computers and software. Every little bit of info that was released about Emerald proves I was right in trusting him. I loved Emerald, it was a dream to use, but as it becomes clear to more people, too good to be true. I’ve tried to warn others, but of course, few listened. This is a huge I TOLD YOU SO to all of them, and to those still using Emerald after all this… You’ll see. And be sorry.
Also, I thought it was common knowledge that the SA and later the SS had more then a few homosexuals in high ranking positions?
Willard47
Sep 8th, 2010
This story isn’t quite over. I personally havn’t spent much time in sl since this story came to my attention. The move on the part of Lindon Labs to ban Emerald viewer all be it a bit slow in my opinion, has partially restored my faith in Second Life. It remains to be seen if Fractured Crystal actually gets busted and is prosecuted for his crimes? If second life was the real world you can be sure an age limit would be levied on future software developers involved in writing code for anything resembling any kind of social net work?
To all you Emerald users out there. There are at least a dozen alternetave third party graphic viewers available. I suggest you shop around just like you do when you are in world?
Hugh janus
Sep 10th, 2010
@Alexa Sharpshire
Following your threat to leave Second Life and the panic that caused within Linden Labs and on the financial markets across the world it has been noted that your continued support of Linden Labs by staying and not deleting your account has totally blown any credibility you have
Thank you for giving everyone a huge bowl full of lulz
Noddington Schmooz
Sep 14th, 2010
@Alexa Sharpshire
And yet, it’s September 14th, and there you online.
Way to stick it to THE MAN!
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 14th, 2010
@ Noddington Schmooz
Nice catch, lol… turns out those Emerald ragers didn’t stick to their promises.
Yep
Sep 14th, 2010
“Way to stick it to THE MAN!”
LMAO!!
Do you want to “stick it to the man”? Here is how you do it and still use SL.
Sell your land and move your home to another grid. Protest or not, a free sim with a 75usd setup fee and 75 usd a month cannot be beat.
Most people do not want the whole grid inside their homes. Just their friends. So you and your friends log out of SL and login on your nice private island on Inworldz ( for free)
. When you want to re enter the mainstream again. Log back into SL.
What does 75 USD get you in SL? Maybe a laggy homestead sim that you rented with covenants so strict that you wonder why you bothered. 75 USD gets you a cluttered 1/4 sim tucked in between two ugly malls and spinning land for sale signs in your window.
All of this gets you what? a few thousand prims to work with?
75 USD gets you on the other grid a full private island ( you have a choice of 10 island types) with 3 times more prims that SL offers you.(no more prim counting)
Do you have a store that the sales are sluggish or non existent? Moving your store to the other grid ( like many of the other big name stores have done) opens you up to more customers and suddenly you are not just one of a million other stores trying to sell the same product. You now become one of the few selling a badly needed product .
Some grids like Inworldz has the same protections that SL has on content theft. Yes they cannot stop copybot just like SL is unable to do, but they will do take downs and Bans on people who do copybot. So you are as safe as you are in SL on that topic.
Using a few of the 3rd party viewers, a content creator can import and export their builds between grids minus the textures. So a little touch up on the other end and you are ready for business.
I am sure this idea is not a good one to people who rent and sell land, or to LL who wants to collect high priced tier( like a slum lord) on a grid with many problems, but money talks and we all know what walks.
had enough
Sep 14th, 2010
That is old news I did that months ago after LittleBlackduck Lindsay moved to that grid. Just hang in Second Life but spend my money there. Inworldz has a nice exchange rate with their ATM’s on each grid . LOL I thought someone fucked up the first time I tried it. My 1000 Lindens came out on Inworldz as 2500 of their coin. This is like driving down to Mexico and shopping. I see another Las Vegas coming soon.
Inworldz rules on the private islands is “as long as it is legal in the United States it is allowed.”
Here is a good read on it
http://danielvoyagerblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/logging-into-inworldz/
geniusthemaster
Nov 7th, 2010
well the truth revealed “2.1.0 which is much better than 2.0 in my opinion” yeah cute. everyone knows that ANY standard linden viewer code was always garbage. and i have the proof this time. you see a DAY before emerald went out which was lucky coincidence for me, aka gunmaker guardian, there was a limited edition of emerald that was amazingly .. the VERY orginal speed. and it has distinct plugins from lordgregreg, the very original speed fyi was a minimum of 30 REAL(as apposed frames per second.. even on a graphics card less system
and then crystal came in, and by the way m the only one who would know that lonely bluebird and crystal were from the patrioticnigras.org website. which i liberally destroyed with permission from the fyi. and all of this could have been avoided if lordgregreg back could have simply acknowledged my skills for making emerald POSSIBLE. then i could have been on the emerald dev team during major operation. the ONLY thing the devteam did .. exluding greg, was add clout and garbage and propoganda to the viewer that was otherwise garbage. when it was just me and greg greg 99% me 1%(although i can do ALLOT with one percent) were working ogether on par plugins for sl , before it became emerald viewer, yeah.. u bet it was the shit. my avatar when working with greg alone was hyperdyne lupindo, which was in fact eating alive by greedy lindens beacuse i had 9000 lindens in that account. and to the people who hire “lindens” you hired hackers, whos main skill was to exploit and reverse ingeineer stuff… way to fing go. so of course they will steal money from your customers and steal code from other viewers.. only to put big gaping security holes into what u already had.. nimrods funny thing is emerald viewer didnt die at all just all the hype 
me and greg could easily get back meet again some time in the future and make it again lol. cianara suckers
Nelson Jenkins
Nov 7th, 2010
@ geniusthemaster
I don’t know whether to congratulate you, debunk you, or flame you. That was probably one of the most indecipherable block of text I have ever read on AH.
Jaiden
Jun 21st, 2011
Price to pay for content protection from Skills Hak 700 L$ a month.
Price for a Copybotter to disable their Media, come back into SL Steal your entire store and post it on a torrent for download PRICELESS!
For every idiot out there stupid enough to believe that CDS actually is never used for personal reasons, revenges, and greifs against people think again $700 L$ a month from as many stupid people as he can when copybots can just disable media and walk right in not scanned, he uses this money to help cover his tier costs money to buy extra Pizza’s and Cokes yet what do you get NOTHING.
Skills Hak, enough of your scams make the system 100% FREE, and offer it to the public, do something for real for our content developers in Second Life they deserve real help, the people being griefed by your system deserve to be removed from your so called CopyBot list as they have been on the list over two years, and nope you wont remove them cuz you have personal revenges, and like to lie to people.
Skills Hak and his/Her False DMCA to try to silence the truth from going out, but they failed, as I made sure it went VIRAL, all over the interwebs enjoy that Skills Hak.
@ Linden Lab, Please remove this persons account from Second Life for use of illegal spyware scanning unaware residents, Data Mining without express consent, or permission, or use of his product or services it is illegal, it as it is wrong, and many customers dont want to use the SL Service anymoar.
I find it funny that Skills Hak is still in Second Life, I want to see this bitc* gone anyone no why he still hear?
gunmaker guardian
Oct 8th, 2011
coff you talked about cds… dude i was already back on secondlife around that grubby protection scheme. the only thing anything can search for with sertainty nowadays is text string code. simply notepad += the code and replace all “dirty viewer name” with “insert some boolshit here”. done deal?