Fifteen Years Ago: The Emeraldgate Scandal

 

Fifteen years ago early this month, Second Life's most popular then was collapsing, and the one that would replace it would be born as a result of it's demise.  In early and mid 2010, the Emerald third-party viewer had been the most popular one. But in August came a Directed Denial Of Service attack that was caused by computers using the viewer at the time, resulting in what came to be known as the Emeraldgate scandal. On September 1, 2010, Team Emerald announced it would soon be folding. Two days later, on September 3, former Emeraldgate member Jessica Lyon announced she had formed a new team and had made a new viewer "from the ashes of Emerald," Team Phoenix and it's Phoenix viewer. 

 

A few years later, the Phoenix viewer would be retired and replaced by the Firestorm viewer, the team having renamed itself Firestorm as well. Over the years, the team has faced a number of challenges large and small. And eventually Jessica would step down from managing on a daily basis. But Team Firestorm continues on. 

For more information, read the 2018 article on the subject, and an interview with then Firestorm team member Tonya Souther.

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

Thirteen Years Ago: The Emeraldgate Scandal

 

Thirteen years ago, Second Life's most popular then was collapsing, and the one that would replace it would be born as a result of it's demise.  In early and mid 2010, the Emerald third-party viewer had been the most popular one. But in August came a Directed Denial Of Service attack that was caused by computers using the viewer at the time, resulting in what came to be known as the Emeraldgate scandal. It would be thirteen years ago tomorrow, September 1, 2010, in which Team Emerald announced it would soon be folding. Two days later, on September 3, former Emeralgate member Jessica Lyon announced she had formed a new team and had made a new viewer "from the ashes of Emerald," Team Phoenix and it's Phoenix viewer. A few years later, the Phoenix viewer would be retired and replaced by the Firestorm viewer, the team having renamed itself Firestorm as well. 

For more information, read the 2018 article on the subject, and an interview with then Firestorm team member Tonya Souther.

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

Emeraldgate And Start of Team Phoenix, Ten Years Ago

It was ten years ago this month that the most popular third-party viewer used by Second Life residents at the time was blocked by Linden Lab as a result of a scandal, and soon after three of the more noteable members of the viewer team were either banned or vanished from the virtual world. But many of the team had already split away and formed a new team and a new viewer, one that would go on to become the most popular viewer. This was Emeraldgate, which would be the end of Modular Systems and the Emerald viewer, and the start of Team Phoenix and the Phoenix viewer, which would eventually become Team Firestorm.

Jessica Lyon, the leader of Firestorm would have a message on their website on their anniversary, September 3.

Ten years ago to this day, the Phoenix Firestorm Project was formed. The Phoenix was born a decade ago. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10! How crazy is that? In human years, 10 years is long, but in Phoenix years… well, this bird is OLD!

The Firestorm Project is powered by people who are altruistic through and through. While we started this venture with just a handful of altruists, over the years our team has grown remarkably. Today we have over 80 amazing people from all walks of life behind us in what we do, and we do many things.

While our team has grown overall, we have also, sadly, lost many good folks along the way—some who were with us from day one. We miss them. I miss them. Whatever the reason for their departure, I thank them for their altruism and time with us. You know who you are … thank you.

Further details of what happened can be found in this 2018 article. In an interview a few weeks later, Firestorm member Tonya Souther would offer what it was like from the inside while Emeraldgate and the breakup of Modular Systems was happening.

Jessica would go on to say Firestorm's anniversary party was delayed, but would take place on Sunday October 18. The event will have three live performances: Savannah Rain, Maximillion Kleene, and Keeba Tammas and the Tiny Maniacs. There will also be gifts available. Stay tuned for further details.

Source: Firestorm

Bixyl Shuftan

Phoenix Viewer Support to End Dec 31st

Jessica Lyon announced on the Phoenix-Firestorm blog that support for the Phoenix Viewer would come to a close at the end of the year.

More on the story later. For now, check the Phoenix-Firestorm blog Here.

Phoenix Development May Stop Soon

To Phoenix fans, Tonya Southern of the Firestorm/Phoenix team has some less than pleasant news, "Viewer 1 is officially on borrowed time." In the latest post on her blog, she talked about a recent third-party viewer meeting with Oz Linden about some upcoming changes with Second Life. Specifically, Project Shinning. While it should stop "bake fail" in newer viewers, "it is incompatible with current viewers. … The result of the server-sized bake is that viewers that don't handle it will simply see gray avatars, with no way to fix them."

It was Tonya's opinion that the old Linden Lab Viewer 1, when this happens, will no longer be useable, along with third-party viewers not actively maintained. Aside from Singularity and possibly Cool VL, she didn't expect any other third party viewers based on Viewer 1 technology to continue, "Nobody else is developing a V1 Viewer any more."

And the Phoenix Viewer, which continues to be the most popular of the third-party viewers? Team Phoenix has yet to make a decision, but in Tonya's opinion, "it's time to say that we are not going to put any more effort into Phoenix."

"As far as I'm concerned, it's time to put Phoenix to rest. The developers don't like working in the codebase, as in many ways it's an unmaintainable tissue of hacks, the support team barely remembers how to run it, and Firestorm now provides essentially all of the function Phoenix has, and much more besides."

Tonya recognized this would be an unpopular change, especially those who won't or can't run Viewer 2 and 3 Viewers, but "there comes a point when making an old program run in a new environment simply isn't feasible." Her advice, those who vowed not to run Viewer 2 better change their mind or make plans to depart Second Life. Same thing with those with older computers, "Me? I'll be happily running Firestorm 5."

Tonya's post got a mixed reaction. While some agreed, others did not. It was similar with the article New World Notes did, people saying there was no way Team Phoenix would give up on the most popular Second Life Viewer.

If the Phoenix Viewer is becoming harder and harder for its team to work with, it may not matter much to them if they stop the updates. From the very beginning, they've been a volunteer project. Success or failure, they don't make any money, only prestige.

Fortunately for Viewer 2 haters, or those whom have no personal problems with it but their computers can't run it, Singularity and Cool VL are still out there, though Singularity hasn't had a Mac update recently. And what if down the road all V1-based Viewers stop working? For some, it'll be time to get out the credit card (though Mac lovers will feel a bigger bite on the wallet). Though it isn't hard to imagine some die-hard V2 haters, and sadly a few on older machines with limited budgets (or whom get sold a newer machine that performs worse), whom say farewell to Second Life. It should be interesting to see how many head to Opensim worlds.

Sources: The Tigress's Second Den, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Phishing Scams Target Phoenix & Firestorm

The development team at Phoenix/Firestorm are warning residents who use their viewers about a phishing scam that is targeting them.

The scammers claim that the people at Phoenix are paying Lindens to residents who take a survey. There is a link where the residents are led to a fake (but very realistic looking) login page. When the residents log in, their account name and passwords are taken. The scammers can then log in and steal the resident’s identity, Lindens and inventory. The scammers have even used the resident’s contact/friends list to send out phishing notes. This practice leads people to believe they are getting safe links since the information is coming from a friend.

Jessica Lyon of Phoenix/Firestorm stated that they are not paying Lindens for any type of survey. They are warning residents to be very careful about logging into fake sites. If residents believe they have been a target, they should immediately go to Secondlife.com to change their password.

For more information go to the Phoenix/Firestorm support site at http://www.phoenixviewer.com/. The site has detailed information on what URL to look for whenever you are asked to log into your account.

Information for this article was taken from http://www.phoenixviewer.com/.

Grey Lupindo

Editor's Note: Treminari Huet also wrote on the subject: http://treminarisecondlife.blogspot.com/2012/03/scammers.html

Phoenix Team Leader Jessica Lyon Speaks Out About New Third Party Viewer Policy

Yesterday on Feb 28th, Jessica Lyon made a public appearance to speak about the recent changes Linden Lab announced of their Third Party Viewer Policy. The Phoenix "office hour" took place at the Rockcliffe University area, and was in front of a packed audience with up to 150 residents in and around an auditorium at the intersection of four sims (Rockcliffe I, Rockcliffe Library, Agile 3D, and Rockcliffe Conservatory). Despite delays, sim crashes, a restart, and a troublesome griefer, the meeting went on and most of the people stayed or came back to listen. There was also the option to see the event over Treet.tv live.

Appearing with Phaylen Fairchild, Jessica told the audience she wanted to give her side of the matter, but be objective in doing so. She told the audience that the features showing users of the Phoenix and Firestorm what Viewers others were using and what their online status was would soon be gone. Other than that, the viewers would not be changing, and it was her impression Linden Labs would not be asking for any more.

Jessica told the audience that Linden Lab had first come to her several months earlier asking about the possibility that Phoenix could do away with the feature showing what viewer others were using. They told her there were reports coming in of "bullying" by third-party users on users of official viewers. Jessica stated she then went about with an alt using the official viewer, and had a few encounters that gave her the impression there was some truth to the Lab's claims.

What Jessica felt was the policy change that would have the biggest impact was the one about any further changes to the viewers would have to be approved by Linden Lab for use on official viewers, stating they wanted to preserve the "shared experience" of the residents. "I get it in principle, but," Jessica felt this would have a detrimental effect on further innovation as developers would be less inclined to spend weeks or months on a new feature and have no guarantee it would be approved by the Lab. She stated Linden Lab had the contrary opinion, that they honestly believed that their policy wouldn't affect further third party research.

She brought up the former Qarl Linden's work on a mesh deformer viewer tool to allow users to correctly wear mesh clothing, and how it had been Crowdfunded by donations. She cautioned anyone else interested in crowdfunding a viewer development would be subject to Linden Labs vetoing the project, and "all the money the community paid ... is wasted."

Jessica told the audience they were going to go ahead and do what Linden Lab was asking: submit further developments to them first for use on official viewers and awaiting approval before using the new features on new viewer updates. She felt as in the past year the Lab has been more active in updating new features, there was reason to hope, "We'll see how things go."

Jessica took some questions from the audience. Among them, would they design viewers for other grids. She answered, "Good question," saying it has never really been discussed by the team, but "not out of the question."

She did feel there would continue to be third party viewers and teams behind them, "(Like you) we're residents. We deal with the community more directly. ... I don't think (Linden Lab) will ever truly understand (it's users)."

Jessica gave the audience a number of links they could read about various perspectives on the Third Party Viewer policy changes,"Policy Changes" on the Official Second Life forums, Your Nymph, the Andromeda Media Group, "Stiffle Competition" on the Official SL forums, Inara Pey, Tateru Nino, Nalate's Things, Prim Perfect, Tonya Souther (the Phoenix Mac development leader), Ciaran Laval, and The Torch. Daniel Voyager also posted a number of screenshots of the meeting on his Flickr. Presumably, there will be a recording of the event available soon.

Bixyl Shuftan

*Editor's note* This article was slightly edited later in the day due to the rush job to get the news out due to public demand.

Personal Account: Finally Can See Mesh, But ...

Going about Second Life isn't always easy even for the best of computers. For my older computer, it's been getting a bit difficult lately. The good news, I'm finally able to see the mesh objects that have been the subject of so much discussion. The bad news, it seems I have a choice of two buggy viewers.

My personal account is in Extra.

Best Viewer Apps for SL

What Second Life viewer is best? For about a year, the official viewer from Linden Lab has been Viewer 2. But more residents prefer the Phoenix viewer. Any1 Gynoid compares the two viewers, and takes a look at their applications.

Read the story in Extra.

Firestorm Preview Interface Customization Tutorial

"A Tutorial video on how to customize the Firestorm Viewer as of January 26th. The viewer will however continue to change as we progress further into development." By Jessica Lyon

Phoenix Reports Counterfeit Viewers

This message was going around Second Life group chats yesterday:

We've just received from a credible source that there are viewers being circulated that look just like official third party viewers, (including the Phoenix Viewer) but that have key loggers and password stealer's in the code. Please do not download any viewers from url's outside the viewers associated website! If someone offers you a viewer that is not hosted on their official site, please abuse report that person and include the link they were sending you too. More info about this on our website blog.

The source of the message was the Phoenix Viewer Team. It was not stated whom was sending these counterfeits.