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I am not an Emerald user. I tried it once, saw no real benefits and the lag got 3 times worse for me. However I try to keep up with the SL site and other sites with what is going on in SL. Some of you may not know about this, and I think it is important that you know.
There have been various problems with Emerald in the past, with developers coding release of private information from users, "accidentally" putting in a Copybot feature, and other things. The current drama involves something that happened this month.
Modular Systems used Emerald's login page to make its 80,000 users access a particular website repeatedly (about 30 times per login). This is called "distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack". The goal is to make the attacked website inaccessible for an extended period of time. A DDoS attack is a federal crime in the U.S. and many other countries. If prosecuted, it usually results in a prison term for the attacker.
At Modular Systems they admitted on their website to the event which they termed as a "silly idea" against the blog of an ex-Emerald developer who had left the staff under negative circumstances and has been developing his own viewers. If the blog owner noticed the traffic and decided to install malicious software on their blog, they could have downloaded malware to Emerald users with every Emerald log in.
Fractured Crystal, the owner of Emerald, has admitted to personally being the developer who pulled the "silly idea" and has resigned from Emerald.
Paisley Beebe from "Tonight Live" (another Treet show) had Emerald as her talk show guests this week and reports on her blog: "News over at SLU (where this story broke) is that Fractured Crystal, the head of Modular Systems and the developer behind the attempted DDoS has resigned. Apparently it was posted on the Modular Systems Blog and then taken down, but some astute individual got a copy first...the announcement also says that he is handing over control of the web server to Arabella Steadham, Modular Systems PR".
However later I found information that Arabella Steadham has also resigned so I don't know the true story there.
So basically, from the evidence out there, it appears that at best Emerald is run by immature people who may be charged with a federal crime, at worst by truly malicious developers who are using your logins to participate in harassment and crimes.
Some people are choosing to stay on with it due to intense dislike of Viewer 2. I personally had difficulty with Viewer 2 and have gone back to using Version 1.25 until V2 becomes more usable, and I realize many have become accustomed to the perks of 3rd party viewers like Emerald but you might want to do your own research here and think about it.
From what I've read, if you decide not to use Emerald anymore, their lsl bridge stays attached to your avatar. Apparently you need to uninstall it and find a folder in your SL inventory called #Emerald that contains the lsl bridge. Otherwise their codes will still be running on your system even on the old viewers.
There are many other 3rd party viewers, but really I think you are taking your chances to install them. In the long run, from what Philip Linden said at his speech about SL being unable to introduce great features like mesh while so many other viewers are being used, it sounds to me like 3rd party viewers may be hitting the highway soon anyway.
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If you are going to stop using Emerald or another 3rd party viewer but have problems with SL Viewer 2, you can still use the older versions. Go to this link and you can download official older versions of the SL viewers.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Old_versions |
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New post today on the SL blogs:
Philip Linden: "Late last week, we discovered a denial-of-service attack that was being served through the widely distributed Emerald third-party viewer. This is in direct violation of our third-party viewer policy (part 2, section d, paragraph iii).
We have removed Emerald from the list of third-party viewers, and are now in touch with the Emerald team to discuss what can happen next. We did this to do our best to protect the safety and security of Second Life users. We will not tolerate a viewer that includes malicious code, nor will we tolerate development teams with a history of violating users’ trust or disrupting their lives.
We take privacy, safety, and security very seriously, and we will act to the best of our abilities to protect it. We have not yet disabled logins via the Emerald viewer, but will do so if we feel the software and the team behind it is not able to meet the standards we’ve set. While Emerald is currently the focus of our attention because of what happened recently, all third-party viewers are held to the same standard, and must comply with the third-party viewer policy.
The third-party viewer directory is designed to be largely self-policing, but we take our responsibility to act very seriously when problems come to our attention. Our goal is that you should feel comfortable using many different viewers in accessing Second Life. While there are always risks involved in using a third-party viewer, we are doing what we can to minimize those, and we encourage and deeply appreciate third-party development. Our new Snowstorm project is an example -- allowing third-party developers to deliver more directly and rapidly to the Second Life viewer.
If you have been using the Emerald viewer, for now we would encourage you to consider either one of the Linden Lab viewers, or an alternative third-party viewer." |
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Thanks Jack, I never used Emerald either, but I was thinking of trying it. After reading this, no way Jose! Just think If I would have downloaded that viewer everyone in the world would have found out I live on 3456 Causeway Drive, Sacramento, CA 94206 and possibly that my phone number is (301)-917-2204--Phew! I also feel bad for all the guys who won't see BB's anymore :P.
Anyway, it is good this info got out before things went further than revealing logins, who knows what other information they breached. I have tried v2 and I had a difficult time learning  so I went to v1.23.5 and maybe later I will tackle v2 again.  |
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| The Emerald viewer login page has a link to their blog. It is stating right now that they've reapplied for the third party viewer rights, LL has accepted with conditions. They are meeting those conditions now and will be reinstated once everything is sorted out. |
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well if ll labs wasnt that idiot to make such a stupid ui like viewer 2 and had some of the basic perks emerald like viewers support why would anyone use any other viewer than the original sl viewer
I am so used to emerald i wont stop using it , vertical im's alone worths using it |
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