Soft Linden: I love that you guys are doing this — Lonely Bluebird: Saves you guys some work I guess
This evening, Emerald developer Lonely Bluebird – a.k.a. Phox – took time away from what has certainly been a difficult day, for an exclusive interview with the Herald in which he confirmed that a leaked chatlog at the SLUniverse forums is legitimate – but could be misinterpreted since it was taken out of context. Phox went on to tell me that Emerald remains popular despite the recent controversy and claimed to have seen over 114,000 logins over the last day. Can Linden Lab afford to ban Emerald?
Lonely Bluebird – a.k.a. _Phox
Our chat came after a wild day in which Jessica Lyons resigned from the Emerald group after a disagreement about how best to address Linden Lab concerns about the popular Second Life viewer. What maybe more noteworthy – if true – were the revelations on the SLUniverse forums of what are claimed to be chat logs in which Soft Linden encouraged the Emerald gang. According to Fleur Orchid, the chat logs date back to mid march – and are likely to raise eyebrows, while shedding light on the emkdu leaks that contributed to the Emeraldgate scandal.
In the chat, Soft Linden appears to encourage the Emerald developer to use the emkdu library to bake hidden information into avatar textures and jpeg images – despite the fact that including the emkdu libraries violated the GPL license under which the open source Second Life clients are made available. Including the emkdu library with the Emerald viewer is one of the third party viewer violations cited by Linden Lab as being unacceptable, according to Jessica Lyons. The chatlogs leaked by Fleur Orchid are appended to the end of this story.
Pixeleen Mistral: you are online _Phox: I’m always online.
Pixeleen Mistral: I have a few questions Pixeleen Mistral: are you guys getting a lot of downloads for the new version of the viewer? _Phox: http://emeraldviewer.net/downloads.shtml _Phox: Click on "More" to see all versions _Phox: For mac just click the button _Phox: It shows download counts for all versions, 2600 went up about an hour and a half ago?
Pixeleen Mistral: do you expect Linden Lab to attempt to ban Emerald? and will a ban work? _Phox: I have no idea really. _Phox: I don’t think they want to ban it, it would inconvenience so many people.
Pixeleen Mistral: well – if the Lab did ban the viewer – would it have much effect? _Phox: Well yesterday 114k people logged in using emerald _Phox: So I’d say that would be a pretty big effect. _Phox: If you’re vaguely referring to the rumor that I made emerald "unblockable" then I can tell you that is false.
Pixeleen Mistral: Emerald has captured the imagination of the Second Life community – and I can see why – the jiggle boobs thing was pure genius – that really put you guys over the top _Phox: Well, I think that certainly is what made it go viral, but there’s far more to it than that.
Pixeleen Mistral: I have a good friend who loves Emerald for building _Phox: Yeah, there are a lot of scripters who rely on the script preprocessor for their products too.
Pixeleen Mistral: so I think your super power has been you actually play SL – and know what people want – unlike the LL staff _Phox: It’s not just that, the project has a history of doing things that the users want, but LL refuse to do.
Pixeleen Mistral: why doesn’t LL do what user’s want? _Phox: People have been asking for a client AO since 2006.
Pixeleen Mistral: right – client AO is a big deal – what is LL thinking ? _Phox: I suspect it would vary on a case to case basis. I know that the breast physics stuff was discussed internally for example, it was "shot down" in favour of a more dynamic system for mesh physics, which while certainly better would take several years of development. _Phox: Stuff like the build tools and preprocessor well, could be a lack of QA resources, they can’t release something like that without extensive testing.
_Phox: There was a pretty serious bug in the preprocessor that caused us to pull it from a version, and we got a bunch of complaints from people relying on it, so we put it back, albeit as a debug setting only…
Pixeleen Mistral: so looking ahead – what is next for you guys? _Phox: As far as the emerald team goes?
Pixeleen Mistral: you can probably sell a special version _Phox: I suspect various groups will fork and continue, and possibly a few entirely new people will join and make new projects to "replace" it, but it can’t happen.
Pixeleen Mistral: so the 2600 version is the end? _Phox: Unless something major happens, yes.
Pixeleen Mistral: funny how it worked out to be 2600 _Phox: Emerald really can’t continue.
Pixeleen Mistral: if Emerald is over then what will you do next? Pixeleen Mistral: please don’t say "spend more time with your family" or "pursue other interrests" _Phox: Actually it wasn’t 2600, but the last svn revision was 2587, and the switch to hg meant we didn’t really have a revision number for the last one, so we decided to make it 2600. _Phox: There are two popular references in the technology world for the number that I’m aware of.
Pixeleen Mistral: yes _Phox: Anyway, what I do next probably won’t involve viewers.
Pixeleen Mistral: 2600 also means something to those interested in old-school phone hacking _Phox: I have one viewer project I’m working on for a university, and after that I’m out. _Phox: Well make that three then.
Pixeleen Mistral: so you used to have a lot of support from Linden Lab Pixeleen Mistral: but they have turned on you _Phox: We did.
Pixeleen Mistral: there are some chatlogs being circulated where Soft Linden is encouraging you to include info in the baked avatar textures Pixeleen Mistral: are those real? _Phox: If you’re referring to the two conversations from March posted on SLU yesterday, then yes, they are genuine, though I wouldn’t say he was encouraging anything, since I was simply informing him of what we were doing.
Pixeleen Mistral: Soft did say he "loved" what you were doing _Phox: Yes, though it was certainly referring to the overall effort of the Onyx project in reducing the use of viewers with copybot or other malicious functionality.
Pixeleen Mistral: I guess that could be taken two ways _Phox: Keep in mind, that these are two small parts of very long conversations.
Pixeleen Mistral: right _Phox: He was in no way encouraging us to collect user data, in fact, he even came back to me to ask that I ensure the path on linux is cut down to only the containing folder because he was concerned about the /home/<username>/ issue
Pixeleen Mistral: you guys had a lot of access to Linden staff – did that give you an advantage over the other viewer developers? _Phox: I couldn’t really speculate on that, but the support Linden Lab provided us was for our users, not for the development of the viewer itself, to which Linden Lab has always seen themselves as a competitor. The certainly weren’t helping us create new features.
Pixeleen Mistral: I heard that Linden Lab set things up so they would answer questions about Emerald with their support staff – was that true? Pixeleen Mistral: that was in some of the leaked documents attributed to Fractured Crystal – but I was never sure of that was real or not _Phox: No, that’s not the case. There were widespread issues of people being told to uninstall emerald for all sorts of issues, including obvious sim problems. There was a large focus on support because of that issue. _Phox: In fact, LL support were instructed not to support users of any third party viewers at first.
Pixeleen Mistral: so – if Emerald is pretty at the end – and if you could do it all over again – what would you do differently? Pixeleen Mistral: would you change anything? _Phox: Well there were certainly some mistakes made along the way, but I’d say as a whole, Emerald itself, it went quite well.
Pixeleen Mistral: so – no regrets? _Phox: Discounting of course the issues that happened as a result of developers involved in something else.
Pixeleen Mistral: so – anything else that the Herald readers should know? have I missed anything? _Phox: I’m sure there are a lot of things Herald readers should know, but I don’t have any announcements to make at the time.
Pixeleen Mistral: thanks for talking _Phox: No problem.
the leaked chatlogs between Soft Linden and Lonely Bluebird
[2010-03-18 16:43:19] Lonely <3: Ah, well, we needed some way to identify people using our kakadu library, we came up with something really clever: The Emkdu variant encodes the window title into the j2c comment.
[2010-03-18 16:43:32] Soft Linden: Nice!!!
[2010-03-18 16:43:41] Lonely <3: The OnyxKDU variant contains the other end of the cipher, and an exported function to retrieve said comment.
[2010-03-18 16:43:44] Soft Linden: I’d figured that library would be the place to hide things. So it shows up in their baked texture.
[2010-03-18 16:44:07] Lonely <3: Yup, Linux variants encode 128 characters of the path, since window title depends on window manager etc.
[2010-03-18 16:44:27] Lonely <3: I’ve got it nicely tied in to the radar here, it’s fun to see the various names I get when all I see on people is a shiny emerald tag.
[2010-03-18 16:44:45] Soft Linden: I’d look at other places you might store that. We were at least planning to start encoding some info there to help us with DMCA takedowns
[2010-03-18 16:44:56] Lonely <3: We caught the HXO/Sl Black edition creator that way.
[2010-03-18 16:45:11] Soft Linden: Does the jpeg2k format support arbitrary tag/value pairs?
[2010-03-18 16:45:12] Lonely <3: Hmm, well there are various places we could encode that.
[2010-03-18 16:45:21] Lonely <3: Yes
[2010-03-18 16:45:25] Lonely <3: At least I think it does
[2010-03-18 16:45:33] Soft Linden: You could make something misleading like "encode parms" or w/e
[2010-03-18 16:46:38] Lonely <3: Unless someone starts poking at it with a disassembler all they’ll find is a string of mixed printable and unprintable characters in the comment.
[2010-03-18 16:47:18] Lonely <3: We figured it was a good way to keep track of who’s using the proprietary library without a license, not to mention identifying those viewers that want to hide, which is always a goal.
[2010-03-18 16:47:29] Soft Linden: :3
[2010-03-18 16:47:33] Soft Linden: I love that you guys are doing this
[2010-03-18 16:47:55] Lonely <3: Saves you guys some work I guess.
[2010-03-18 16:49:01] Soft Linden: I’d also be inclined to get the end of the path for Windows & Mac builds too. Odds are people are going to rename the viewer filename, even if they don’t change the window title, etc
[2010-03-18 16:49:12] Lonely <3: Yeah that’s what I said >_>
[2010-03-18 16:49:15] Soft Linden: just w/e is in **argv
[2010-03-18 16:49:19] Lonely <3: Zwagoth and Fractured wanted the window title.
[2010-03-18 16:49:19] Soft Linden: I thought you said you just did it on Linux?
[2010-03-18 16:49:27] Soft Linden: Gotcha.
[2010-03-18 16:49:32] Soft Linden: Yeah, I’d shoot for both.
[2010-03-18 16:49:35] Lonely <3: Only because linux doesn’t offer a single function to grab the window title in all window managers.
[2010-03-18 16:49:55] Lonely <3: Yeah I know the path is more useful.
[2010-03-25 16:35:40] You sense a disturbance in the force… (Soft Linden is typing)
[2010-03-25 16:35:51] Soft Linden: Are the marked textures in the current release version?
[2010-03-25 16:36:01] Lonely <3: Yes
[2010-03-25 16:36:06] Soft Linden thumbsup
[2010-03-25 16:36:27] Lonely <3: After we spoke I decided to make a bit of a change to kdu
[2010-03-25 16:37:40] Lonely <3: I made it check the top corner of the image for transparent pixels, if it finds any it encodes the folder name like the linux lib originally did.
[2010-03-25 16:37:50] Lonely <3: If not it encodes the window title.
[2010-03-25 16:38:28] Soft Linden: ah cool hack :3
[2010-03-25 16:38:56] Lonely <3: That hasn’t been released yet, but it can go out at any time since the pack is seperate from the binary.
[2010-03-25 16:39:00] Soft Linden: the transparent pixels specifically – last I knew you were only doing the meta tag
[2010-03-25 16:39:04] Lonely <3: We are
[2010-03-25 16:39:08] Lonely <3: Just the image comment
[2010-03-25 16:39:14] Soft Linden: right
Jessica Lyon has resigned from the Emerald viewer team and published the formerly secret requirements Linden Lab made of the group – which include the expulsion of Skills Hak, Discrete Dreamscape, and Lonely Bluebird (a.k.a. Phox) from the development team – previously Fractured Crystal resigned from the group.
Emerald meeting M Linden, Marty Linden, Joe Linden, and others in happier days (click image for closeup view)
The Emerald gang has been plagued by accusations they were responsible for a DDoS attack on a critic’s web site, revelations of leaking user-identifiable information, high profile resignations, and what is believed to be a case of using unauthorized access to the Vivox admin console to silence another player’s voice – then taunt him in-world. This led Linden Lab to issue a warning against the rogue viewer and remove it from the third party viewer list.
Understandably, Linden Lab seems intent on removing developers with questionable track records from the team, and threatened to block access of the Emerald viewer to Second Life. But in a desperate bid to keep Emerald alive, Arabella Steadham – who does not lie – and Lonely Bluebird felt it best that Lonely Bluebird remain on the team – and so have locked everyone else’s access to the modularsystems servers, according to Jessica’s resignation announcement:
As of some time this morning, all access to the servers have been severed to all but Arabella Steadham and Lonely Bluebird. Neither me, nor any of the other Emerald Developers have the ability to put out releases at this time.
Some speculate that the return of Fractured Crystal to the Emerald gang is now likely – according to an update on Jessica’s blog Fractured Crystal has applied for a trademark on the Emerald Viewer.
But this may all be in vain, if Jessica’s account of the Linden Lab requirements is accurate (full text at the end of this story). Will a skeleton development crew led by Arabella Steadham be able to comply with the Lab’s demand for a sanitized Emerald viewer by Friday?
Apparently Jessica’s ejection from the gang was the culmination of a heated discussion – portions of which were provided by Ms. Lyons, and say in part:
[1:02:01 PM] Jessica Trinity: users aside, everyone here is here because we want to see emerald succeed
[1:02:09 PM] Jessica Trinity: and we’re still here because we believe it can
[1:02:34 PM] Jessica Trinity: leaving for the sake of the project would be the only honorable thing to do hon
[1:02:55 PM] Phox: I guess I’m not honorable then.
[1:03:04 PM] Jessica Trinity: so your willing to be the reason emerald dies?
[1:03:25 PM] Phox: No, Linden Lab will be the reason Emerald dies, regardless of what I do.
[1:03:35 PM] Phox: If my staying results in that outcome, well you can say I told you so.
…
[1:07:14 PM] Jessica Trinity: If i was told to leave, and i had to leave to keep this project going i wouldn’t think twice about it. I would be sad, but i would also be proud that i made the sacrifice to keep it alive
[1:07:48 PM] Phox: Well when I’m told to do something I don’t immediately bend over and let linden lab fuck me.
[1:08:00 PM] Jessica Trinity: phox, they are going to kill the project
[1:08:04 PM] Jessica Trinity: are you living in denial?
[1:08:05 PM] Phox: Let them
Meanwhile an Emerald gang project meeting has appeared on YouTube – apparently Phox will include the capability for the viewer to spoof it’s identity in the very near future.
With an unrepentant Phox standing shoulder to shoulder with Arabella Steadham effectively daring the Lab to ban the Emerald viewer, the clock ticks toward a friday deadline for compliance – or an Emerald viewer ban. All of this suggest now might be a good time for even hardcore Emerald fans to consider their options.
Emerald Project Team:
We have removed the Emerald viewer from our Third-Party Viewer Directory because of its multiple violations of our Policy on Third-Party Viewers.
Our Policy prohibits the intentional targeting of third-party sites as was done recently by the Emerald viewer’s login page. Specifically, the Policy prohibits the distribution of harmful functionality like denial of service attacks or griefing attacks. (TPVP section 2.d.iii)
Our Policy also requires a published privacy policy that specifically describes what user data the third-party viewer collects, stores, or uses, and how it uses, displays, or shares that data. (TPVP section 4.b.i).
The published privacy policy for the Emerald viewer does not disclose what user information the viewer collects. When it came to our attention that the Emerald viewer was collecting the installation path without stripping any user account names present in the path, and storing it in textures produced by the viewer’s graphics library wrapper, we asked that this code be altered to omit full directory paths. After assurances from Emerald developers (Lonely Bluebird) that the code would be altered, we were disappointed to learn that instead of stopping the practice of adding data to textures, the Emerald viewer code encrypted the data in order to obfuscate the data collection practices.
In addition to violating our Policy on Third-Party Viewers, these actions are significant breaches of the trust of the Second Life community. Please remedy these breaches immediately by taking the steps outlined below. Taking these steps is critical to providing transparency around Emerald’s viewer functionality and collection of user data, and to ensuring that the viewer complies with Linden Lab policies and the law. The steps alone do not, however, guarantee that the Emerald viewer will be readmitted to the Third-Party Viewer Directory.
Provide transparency in your development efforts to both the Second Life community and Linden Lab, including:
Use open mailing lists or forums for your developer communications.
Provide a publicly viewable source code repository.
Provide public code commit notices.
Demand accountability from each and every Emerald developer, including:
Require each committer to provide real-world identity information to Linden Lab as a signatory to the certification of compliance with the Third Party Viewer Policy.
End the participation of any developer who has deliberately violated Linden Lab policy or the law.
The Emerald viewer’s closed source emkdu library is not in compliance with the GPL. Bring all current and future versions of the Emerald viewer into compliance with the GPL by omitting emkdu. Use OpenJPEG or other GPL-compatible code.
Update your posted Privacy Policy for the Emerald viewer to specifically describe what user data has been collected or stored by any version of the Emerald viewer that may be used to log into Second Life. For all user data collected or stored, specifically describe in the policy how that user data has been used, displayed, or shared. If you wish to disable login of any versions of the Emerald viewer that may be collecting user data, please advise us immediately of the specific viewer versions.
Do not distribute any functionality that conceals information in Second Life assets, including through encryption or steganographic techniques, with the sole exception of information that LSL scripts produce or consume. We will be updating the Third-Party Viewer Policy shortly to clarify this requirement. Be sure to bring all current and future versions of the Emerald viewer into compliance with the requirement.
Please respond to this notice no later than this Friday, August 27 and confirm the date by which you will have completed the above steps. Failure to comply with the steps may result in further action by Linden Lab, beyond removal from the Third-Party Viewer Directory. We look forward to your prompt response.
Sincerely,
Oz Linden
And our second response from LL was.
Your responses are acceptable, with the following exceptions and clarifications:
We have considered your request to retain Phox, Skills, and Discrete on the team in some advisory capacity, and have made a final decision: No association with the project in any capacity is acceptable. All connections between those individuals and Emerald Viewer project must be terminated, and that fact made public by the team.
The time frame for a release that does not include the emkdu.dll is not acceptable. A release must be made available that will not use an emkdu.dll or an llkdu.dll even if they are on the users system must be made available.
Each of the above issues must be addressed no later than Friday September 3rd or Linden Lab will begin taking steps that will culminate in blocking all access by the Emerald Viewer.
With respect to the identification of contributors: the use of age or payment verification will not be sufficient. We will provide more details on the new requirements as part of updates to the Third Party Viewer Directory policies; these will apply to all new applications, not just yours. Specifics are still being worked on, and I’ll share them publicly as soon as possible, but the essence of the change is that each person with commit access to the viewer code or any project web assets served through the viewer will need to individually execute a certification of compliance with the Third Party Viewer Policy, including real identification and addressing information. Those identities will be confidential.
With respect to the public code repository – the googlecode repository is acceptable, but a link to it should be added to the set of links in your project web site footer, not only on the FAQ page.
[Juliana and Ariella Moonstone contacted me when I was on vacation and wanted to pose. As you will soon see, it was an easy sell because they are two wonderfully creative people. It is an honor and pleasure to introduce the beautiful and talented sisters as this weeks Post 6 Grrrls ~Timothy Morpork]
What seems like years ago, a Bwangi’Kr’il trader came to our planet. It was the first such vessel anyone on the planet had ever seen, and while there had been stories of visits from people from beyond the stars, they were thought to be legend and superstition. Our planet is a remote and primitive place in a remote galaxy with nothing worth having except pride and honor.
My sister and I were prepared for the visitors. While our elders debated the existential, we took our swords and our axes and our smarts and talked our way aboard the ship. We have been traveling from planet to planet, from space station to space station, learning new things and representing our people to the best of our ability.
Early in our journey, in the belly of a cramped transport to the Citadel Space Station outside Telos IV, my sister and I heard another traveler speaking of The Force. Our ears always alert to learn, we have heard much of this Force in the weeks since, and now we seek one of its priests to further us in our understanding. We now seek to become members of the Jedi.
How’s that for fun?
I’ve been in SL for years and never tried a roleplay. A few weeks ago, my best virtual friend and shopping enabler suggested we go full nerd and give one a try, so we made new avies and here we are. Neither of us know enough about Star Wars to do anything more than just make shit up as we go, so that’s what we do. It is the most fun I’ve had in Second Life in years.
Will we become Jedi? (Jedies?) Will the dark side get us? Will we get stung by a radioactive spider and get superpowers? Will someone please start making some really good fantasy clothes? For these answers and more, check in with us, we’re making this up as we go and having the time of our lives. Jedi Masters, please call!
Thank you Herald, for having us, and thank you Timothy for the chance to be here and the fantastic pictures!
My earlier speculations were not mere hyperbole. Pony Linden, the fun-time animal from simpler times in Second Life’s fake world, has been killed off in the back-to-basics campaign Philip Linden launched when Mitch Kapor gave the boot to M. Linden stepped down as Linden Lab’s CEO.
Pony was a shared account for the Lindens, who used the animal to provide rides to new residents back when Second Life was considered hip and, occasionally, fun. When Linden Lab employees were permitted simply to goof off, for the enjoyment of those who populate the grid they would also show up at events as Pony.
Following a report by Tateru “finger on the fading pulse” Nino, this reporter searched in-world and found that Pony Linden’s account had indeed been deleted.
All reports that Pony Linden may have been involved in some twisted “Pony Girl” pornographic simulation are completely unfounded. In fact, the truth is far more brutal than a ball-gag and a set of sequined traces. And it could hide a darker story of zombie infection.
Figuring that the Lindens would need to dispose of Pony’s prims after its account got erased, I set out to find any remains of the equine bringer-of-smiles. After combing the back alleys, sewers, hillbilly encampments, and dumpsters of the vast ghettos bordering Governor Linden’s posh properties, I first found hints of an awful truth, then a veritable scene of horror:
I was, at this point, attacked by a group of typically lame Second Life prim-zombies. I managed to blow them all to festering bits before making my escape. Thank the gods of the fake world for a well rendered version of an M1911A1 and many rounds of .45 ACP ammo. Good in a pinch, and more sporting, when a shotgun isn’t available!
Could the Lab be covering up an infection that turns blingtards and fake-bikers into flesh-eating fiends? Or is the Lab merely cutting costs in a desperate attempt to stay afloat?
What is next, Linden Lab? Will you begin abducting random avatars to sell to Zindra perverts or Gorean Masters who pay your bills when Mr. Kapor withholds your allowance? Or, darker still, are you making an army of zombies from the accounts of those who abandon your fake world? Could a hostile acquisition of OpenSim grids, or simply their devastation by the prim undead, be afoot?
Mr. Rosedale, Herald readers, as temperate and well-mannered a bunch as you’ll find among the population of fat naked men sweating in basements, demand an answer.
LindenWorld staff meetings an open book to ban-proof Fractured Crystal, Lonely Bluebird?
Did two Emerald developers – Fractured Crystal and Lonely Bluebird – taunt Emerald critic Hazim Gazov after using the Vivox voice chat admin portal disable Gazov’s Second Life voice? Were the rogue developers able to track Lab staff on private Linden-only islands? It appears so, if a screen capture provided to the Herald this weekend can be believed.
Over the last several months, a YouTube video and chatlogs have circulated, both of which strongly suggest both Fractured Crystal and Lonely Bluebird took the faction wars between the Emeralds and the Soviet Woodbury group to new levels after the Emerald’s site security was compromised and the data mining operation was revealed. This weekend, a source we will refer to as DeepYiff has provided the Herald with evidence the exploit that left Hazim Gazov speechless could also have compromised the security of all Vivox voice chat in Second Life.
While it is impossible to be absolutely certain that the screen captures DeepYiff provided are real, they appear to be the Vivox administration portal which can be used to mute, kick, or ban players from the voice service. The Vivox documentation also states that administrative users can listen in to chat channels without appearing to other users – something that may give pause to the Linden staff using Vivox chat for in-world meetings. The screen capture below shows what is seems to be a Linden staff meeting in progress on the LindenWorld B private island.
click image for full size view
According to Emerald critic Hazim Gazov, both Joe Linden and Soft Linden were aware that some sort of Vivox exploit had taken place after Mr. Gazov reported that his Vivox chat had been disabled. However it is unclear what – if any – action was taken other than to re-enable Mr. Gazov’s voicechat.
While the Vivox admin screen capture appears to be a bit dated – 1/3 of the Linden staff shown are no longer with the lab, presumably due to the lab’s recent cost cutting measures – it appears to be common knowledge in certain circles that chat has been badly compromised.
I asked Plastic Duck for comment last night, and while he was unsure of the exact method Fractured Crystal (jcool) used, Plastic Duck thought it likely that Fractured Crystal had gained control over the Vivox admin interface.
Pixeleen Mistral: what do you know about the VIvox admin interface? Plastic Duck: it’s insecure Pixeleen Mistral: how insecure? Plastic Duck: jcool was able to get full access Pixeleen Mistral: yeah, I got a screen shot that implies that Plastic Duck: and disable peoples accounts Pixeleen Mistral: Hazim’s account for instance Plastic Duck: yeah Pixeleen Mistral: but Vivox has a game moderator can listen in feature Pixeleen Mistral: and LL uses vivox for staff meetings Plastic Duck: yeah he can likely listen in on whatever Pixeleen Mistral: any idea how jcool got in? Plastic Duck: from what I understand you could just force some admin bit Plastic Duck: and the servers would happily comply Plastic Duck: or it could have been related to the exploit that lets you run a rogue sim Plastic Duck: jcool was abusing the shit out of that one Plastic Duck: to download files from peoples computers heh
All of this raises further questions about why Fractured Crystal has not been banned from Second Life – and how much longer the Lab will tolerate the Emerald gang. Fractured Crystal claimed responsiblity for the DDoS attack that led to Philip Linden warning players against the Emerald viewer last week, but perhaps he overheard something in a staff meeting that made him ban-proof.
[Fannie Carter originally posed for Post 6 in September of 2007, and I leapt at the chance to feature her again when she introduced herself the other day. Based on a very limited sample, I have to agree with original photographer Justine Babii’s assessment that Fannie is “scary smart” as she kept me on my verbal toes throughout her photoshoot with scintillating conversation. It is an honor and a privilege to introduce a fascinating woman, Fannie Carter. ~Timothy Morpork]
Hello Everyone,
It has been three years since I last appeared here, and I really can’t believe it. Time sure flies when you’re logged in! Truly, I find that Second Life is an interesting beast when it comes to time- an hour’s conversation on SL seems like something that would last far longer in 1st Life- kind of the virtual equivalent of dreaming, where a dream that seems to go on for years is really over in a matter of seconds, realtime. They should make a movie that deals with this phenomenon, maybe add some explosions, crumbling dreamscapes and Leo diCaprio. Could be a hit?
Stream of consciousness babble about summer movies and this lady’s perception of time in virtualspace aside, it is a great pleasure to pose here again. I was a Herald junky from the time Justine Babii introduced me to it. I love Timothy’s work as much as I love all the rude comments he draws, so to be part of the fun is a thrill.
I don’t do anything phenomenal in Second Life. I have been a blogger, I have done a few builds, I have designed clothing lines, but at present I just hang out. I think the Lindens have discovered that this is what people like about Second Life- hanging out, which bespeaks the switch back to Philip’s leadership? Please feel free to discuss.
That’s not to say it’s not up to being used for greater things. Second Life- our imaginations drive the car, so if your car wants to get the word out about raising money for cancer research or to grow a positive idea, I’m all for it- I’m just saying that now, at my age and place in life, I think it’s nice to have a “game” where I don’t have to be stressed that I’ll be eaten by an ogre or feel that I have to save the world with some noble cause. It’s nice to hang out.
As I think I mentioned, this isn’t my first Post 6 rodeo, so I’ve felt ok with leaving out the details as I think I hit the high spots back the first time. If there’s more you want to know, give a holler. Thanks to all of you for being so entertaining with your comments, and I hope you like these pictures as much as I do. Thanks Timothy for having me back!
Recent months have not beenwholly kind to Second Life, and those circumstances don't seem finished just yet. The Emerald client, one of the most popular third-party viewers -- estimated to be used by as many as half of all players -- has fallen out of favor with Linden Labs and is no longer an officially endorsed option. Scott Jennings has posted a full rundown of the client's history, charting its progress from the earliest inception of the project to its current status of having fallen from grace.
The short version (or as short a version as you can get for drama four years in the making) is that Emerald's coders included some rather... hack-tacular backdoors in the client's coding. This is a downside for reasons that should not need to be specified, but does add up to some major problems for the large playerbase still using Emerald. Second Life has had a hard time getting its users to switch to the 2.0 viewer, and about the only upside may be that the removal of Emerald will change that... but the overall drama isn't going to be kind for either the Emerald project or Linden Labs itself.
Philip Linden took pen in hand today to warn Second Life players the controversial Emerald Viewer has been removed from the official list of third party viewers stating "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" on the Second Life blog.
Underlining the gravity of the situation, the Linden Lab CEO also sent virtual world residents personal e-mails – a task would could not have been fast, easy, or fun – encouraging players to flee the to other viewers: "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".
The Herald contacted the Lab for comment, and Linden Lab PR specialist Pete Linden provided this statement:
We may remove viewers from the Third-Party Viewer Directory when they violate our Policy on Third-Party Viewers. The Policy prohibits the distribution of harmful functionality like denial-of-service attacks or griefing attacks. It also requires a published Privacy Policy that specifically describes what user data the third-party viewer collects, stores, and uses and how it uses, displays or shares that data.
As a result of multiple violations of the Policy, we have removed the listing of the Emerald viewer from the Third Party Viewer Directory.
We have insisted that the Emerald development team make transparent to the Second Life community the functionality of its viewer code and the user data that the Emerald viewer collects. We strongly urge all Residents who continue to use the Emerald viewer to make these demands as well. We also caution Residents of the potential risks involved in using certain versions of the Emerald viewer. Although we have not at this time disallowed use of the Emerald viewer entirely, we may do so if the problems with the viewer are not appropriately remedied by the Emerald development team.
Of note is the requirement of a published privacy policy specifically describing the user data collected by third party viewers and how this information is stored, displayed or used.
This requirement could be a problem for the Emerald viewer, which has a history of gathering full directory path names (which can include real life typists’ names) and baking these into avatar textures without the knowledge of the users. A dispute over this practice led to the departure of LordGregGreg from the Emerald gang recently after Lonely Bluebird (a.k.a. Phox) promised to remove the privacy leak, but did not. Lonely Bluebird remains on the Emerald development team.
The Lab’s statement supports claims by reliable sources that removal of the Emerald viewer from the third party viewer list was a unilateral action on the part of Linden Lab. This contradicts Emerald developer Skills Hak’s assertion that Emerald asked to be removed from the third party viewer list to transfer ownership of the listing from Fractured Crystal.
Mr. Crystal was thrown out of the gang in the wake of an Emerald viewer-based DDOS attack — although the Emerald gang leadership told the Herald this was not really a denial of service. Arabella Steadham – who does not lie – may want to consult with the Lab on their definition of a denial of service attack.
With Linden Lab cautioning players against using certain versions of the Emerald viewer, it may be only a matter of time before some or all versions are banned – unless appropriate remedies are enacted by the Emerald developers. Remedies may soon be moot however, if the players heed the Lab’s warning to flee Emerald.
[Nelson Jenkins has been awarded the “commie” or comment-of-the-week award for this detailed breakdown of the Modular Systems abuses. The award winning comment is reproduced below.]
@ Jocelyn Pawpad
I’m going to go ahead and cross-post this, just in case you didn’t get the memo.
Why anyone would continue to trust these folks will remain an unanswerable question.
– Fractured collected IP addresses linked to avatars in the Emerald Point sim and the RegAPI. This allowed Emerald devs (most of which used the system regularly) to geolocate specific SL users, among other things one can do with an IP address.
– Someone (let’s call them the third party) discovered this system. Phox and Fractured then hacked their voice account so they couldn’t use SL voice. They then stalked him from sim to sim (without map rights).
– Phox threatened to burglarize the third party’s house and steal his actual computer.
– Fractured illegally distributed chat logs of the third party, laughing at how he trolled him.
– Phox called a phone number that was listed in the third party’s Linden Lab user account. It turned out to be fake, and he only called the parent of a student. Unfortunately, harassment charges weren’t filed.
– The third party confronted Fractured and threatened to release the entire contents of the datamine to the public. They reached a compromise: Fractured would release the names of the accounts listed in the datamine and the people who had access to it, but no other information (such as IP addresses), in addition to removing it entirely from his servers. However, the contents were eventually released in full, and the names of those listed in the datamine were posted to the Herald a few months back: http://alphavilleherald.com/2010/05/emerald-devs-modular-systems-data-mine-tracks-16740-avatars.html
– Phox and Fractured both conspire to get the third party’s ISP to cancel their service because of the leak, which they also did numerous times to the creator of the NeilLife viewer, but were ultimately unsuccessful. However, Phox still claims he was successful, and brags regularly about it.
– Fractured and several other Emerald devs (which are still on the team) begin work on the Onyx project, an entirely malicious viewer designed to find security holes in SL. It was also designed to harass and stalk users; however, this functionality was not discovered until its source code was leaked. The devs quickly claimed that it was an old copy and that the newer builds didn’t have those features, until the newest source code was revealed, causing the entire Onyx project to stop and the site to be taken offline. The Onyx viewer is still used, but only by spoofing the Emerald tag and channel name.
– Skills Hak begins selling the Gemini CDS Ban Relay, a system similar to BanLink, but instead it is fully automatic. It uses a QuickTime exploit to determine a user’s identifying information (which is technically illegal per SL policies) and hosts the data on the Gemini server, not unlike the incident with Fractured and Phox way back in the beginning. It’s still being sold, and false positives are being reported, despite Skills’s claims. The system has been cloned repeatedly, proving that it’s not a hard exploit, and that Skills is mostly just conning people by exploiting their fear of copybot.
– The emkdu.dll file, a driver that speeds up texture loading times similar to the llkdu.dll file, was discovered to leak information regarding any Emerald user’s window title and installation directory. (This was not original functionality in the licensed copy.) This allowed anyone that knew how to decrypt the simple encryption to view one’s installation directory, which (depending on the user’s Windows username) revealed one’s real life name. It also allowed users to determine which version of Emerald one was using, and, if it was another client based off of Emerald, what client it was (for example, Onyx).
– The Emerald devs claimed to have removed this functionality. However, they only strengthened the encryption, which was also eventually cracked to reveal that nothing had changed. The encryption was changed one more time, and has not yet been decrypted. With the dismissal of Fracture, Arabella claimed that the emkdu.dll file was replaced with the slower, open-source openjpeg library. It has not been determined whether the openjpeg library also includes similar functionality.
– Because of the entire emkdu.dll fiasco, LordGregGreg, a core Emerald dev, decided to voluntarily leave the project. He has since compiled his own viewer, Emergence, based off of the latest Emerald source code, evading any shady additions they may have put into the Emerald binaries as well. The Emerald team disparaged his position within the devs when he left and went on to defame his character, both officially and unofficially.
– Fractured decided to add 32 hidden iframes in a single pixel that loaded a little over 4.3 MB of data from that third party’s website that I mentioned before every time someone opened the Emerald viewer. In total, an estimate based on the number of hits the third party received placed the bandwidth stolen at 2.1 TB, not including the bandwidth stolen from the users (which would also total up to 2.1 TB). This code was inserted into the actual page on their website that all Emerald clients load on startup, so all stable and beta versions of Emerald were affected. This turned the entire Emerald userbase into an unknowing botnet to carry out a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on said third party’s server. It ultimately failed, which prompted Arabella to claim it was not a DDoS (because apparently, an attempted DDoS is not a DDoS in her eyes) and she released news articles stating such. Due to the nature of the DDoS, the server could have sent malware to the Emerald viewer if the webmaster desired, which was very possible since the Emerald devs claimed the website hosted malicious software. The Emerald devs, particularly Arabella, denounced the third party as malicious and a criminal, and refused to issue an apology for their attack. They still haven’t.
– Philip and Soft Linden begin discussing banning Emerald entirely from accessing the grid. The downside would be approximately 20% of Second Life users would be unable to connect to the grid, which may cause problems.
– Two more core Emerald devs left the team. Arabella claims to leave the team as well, however, she never officially does.
– Arabella continues posting to the Modular Systems blog, claiming it was done only by Fractured, and he was disciplined. She also starts up the story that it was only done to boast about Emerald traffic to the third party. Some Emerald users begin circulating the rumor that it was actually done to increase the third party’s website’s traffic, which is an even worse explanation. She also continues deleting comments on the Modular Systems blog that she deems as “negative”, i.e. they tell the truth. This was recorded on a YouTube video.
– Another YouTube video recording reveals that the entire Emerald dev team knew Fractured had been planning on adding the DDoS code, but did nothing to stop him until it was discovered. Arabella herself didn’t want to “scare the users”, so she made up the story about traffic.
– Yet another YouTube video recording shows Arabella debating whether or not to delete Pathfinder Linden’s comment (who is no longer a Linden due to the cuts). The comment asked some critical questions and she deemed it “negative”, but she decided to release (post) the comment and respond to it, confirming the jacked-up story she posted originally.
– Emerald is removed from the Third Party Viewer Directory. The Directory is a voluntary list of third-party viewers that conform to the TPV Policy. Emerald users (or perhaps the Emerald devs) began circulating the rumor that it was only removed to faciliate the change in ownership to Arabella, even though it was removed before that occured.
– Arabella is given ownership of the Emerald Viewer project from Fractured, who resigned from the project with a long blog post explaining how he was sorry for what had happened. Arabella continues to censor comments on this blog post as well.
– Arabella and Jessica (the project leader and support director, respectively) appear on treet.tv’s live streaming show, Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe. Nothing important is really discussed, except for how Emerald will now be in Arabella’s pseudo-control and that it is being totally restructured for transparency between devs (supposedly) and a more democratic system for code changes. The interviewer, Paisley, asks no critical questions, instead opting for “what is going on?” and “how do you feel about this?”. Jessica read from a script most of the time and started to cry near the end of the program, and Arabella seemed angry and vengeful. She continued to beg for mindless faith from her customers. The IRC server was attacked three times by an Emerald supporter, who disconnected everyone not using a standalone IRC client 3 times during the program.
So, you see, the Emerald team – not just Fractured – has quite a colorful history, and Arabella is definitely not as trustworthy as she wants you to think she is. So please, to those of you that don’t know exactly what is going on, READ THE ABOVE.
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"?
On my first visit to Emerald Point Friday night, I was killed by an unknown assailant within a minute of sitting down with the Emerald developers. I had dropped by hoping for comments from Emerald gang spokeswoman Arabella Steadham, and was pleased to see also in attendance several of the controversial developers – part of a group that many believe are distributing a malware-infested Second Life viewer.
Death is a routine part of reporting on the metaverse, so after I suddenly died and was returned to my home sim, I introducing myself again to Arabella via IM, and gingerly returned to the sim a few minutes later.
During the second visit, Arabella assured me that Emerald users are unlikely to be concerned by allegation that the client has been used for an attempted DDOS attack on an enemy web site — because she does not lie. Arabella’s claim seemed a bit broad – and Urizenus is never around when I need help with parsing these sorts of statements – so I filed this for later research.
Sadly, our 3 minute conversation ended abruptly when I was killed, so I suggested Arabella calm the excitable players for a few minutes. On my return I received assurances I would not be bounced from the sim again. On this visit, I learned that the Emerald gang does not consider silently turning their users’ computers into botnet for mass downloads from a target web site to be a denial of service attack – because the web site did not crash. This was good to know, but raised further questions.
What would their position have been if Hazim Gazov’s iheartanime.com site had been taken offline – or run up a huge bill? We are unlikely to ever know, because mentioning many web sites pay for fixed amounts of bandwidth seemed to touch a nerve, and I was killed for the third time. Whatever weapon the Emerald gang was using on me did not leave a trace, so it was difficult to know who was playing reporter-killer last night. This was convenient – whenever hard questions came up, I went missing and there was nobody specific to blame.
Could this lack of accountability be a common theme within the Emerald group – and the cause of some of their recent problems? If so, it will be interesting to see how long former Lab staffers Data Linden and Qarl Linden will last in the Emerald gang. On the other hand, Linden Lab’s lack of accountability for destructive actions has been a constant theme for my entire Second Life, so the ex-Lab staff may feel right at home.
the start of a 3 minute conversation which ends with a killing
Pixeleen Mistral: I’m sure you are busy Pixeleen Mistral: but perhaps we ccan talk? Arabella Steadham: not awfully flat out Arabella Steadham: whats up Pixeleen Mistral: well I was wondering about the shenanigans post you had Pixeleen Mistral: what led up to that? Arabella Steadham: as you can see by the blog post, it is a general apology to our users Arabella Steadham: theres really not a lot more to be said Pixeleen Mistral: Arabella – do you think they will believe it? Arabella Steadham: I don’t lie Pixeleen Mistral: I wonder if I can believe that statement Arabella Steadham: well that is your choice Pixeleen Mistral: so color me skeptical Arabella Steadham: I’m sure there are many more salacious things you would prefer to believe Arabella Steadham: or post Jessica Lyon: it is a genuine apology, we hope people will see it as what it is.
At this point I am killed again, and find myself back at my home sim. Perhaps we can discuss this in person – if she can get those crazy kids to put the guns away for a few minutes – so we talk via IM:
Pixeleen Mistral: you know – you guys can keep killing meand I’ll report that Pixeleen Mistral: or you can talk- its totally up to you Pixeleen Mistral: maybe you want to calm those guys down Pixeleen Mistral: I am up for about one more killing Pixeleen Mistral: so I’ll give you a few minutes to get your boys to chill Pixeleen Mistral: protip: killing reporters makes you look bad Arabella Steadham: I don’t know who did that Pixeleen Mistral: probably someone who has something to hide Pixeleen Mistral: get those guys to chill out. I’ll be back in 5
If Arabella’s apology to the Emerald users is to be credible, she should be able to exercise at least some minimal control over the Emerald developers. Unfortunately, I soon learn that Arabella can’t get them to stop killing me – can really believe the her when she assures Emerald users that all is well?
Time passes and I return again to Emerald Point. Jessica Lyon assures me that I’ll be safe – and I am, right up until I ask if burning through another site’s bandwidth is fair play in the Second Life third party viewer wars.
Pixeleen Mistral: ok, let’s try one more time Arabella Steadham: there’s really not a lot more to say Jessica Lyon: Not sure who ejected you, but it won’t happen again today. Jessica Lyon: How can we help you Pixeleen Mistral: well, I have some questions. I write for the Alphaville Herald Pixeleen Mistral: perhaps you have heard of it Jessica Lyon: yes, we know Pixeleen Mistral: from what I gather Hazim Gazov’s iheartanime web sites was DDOSed by the Emerald login page Arabella Steadham: that is incorrect Pixeleen Mistral: ok, so what happened? Arabella Steadham: you can read the correct interpretation on the MS blog Pixeleen Mistral: I read that – but it confused me Arabella Steadham: thats a pity Arabella Steadham: It was quite clear to many of our users Pixeleen Mistral: can you help me understand how putting 32 hidden iframes in your login page which render to a 1 x 1 pixel square is all in good fun? Pixeleen Mistral: because its a little hard to believe that this was an accidental goof Pixeleen Mistral: but maybe I am confused Arabella Steadham: I think your information is incorrect Pixeleen Mistral: well I did look at the google cache for the page Pixeleen Mistral: and I did see the iframes at the bottom that all point to iheartanime.com Pixeleen Mistral: what is incorrect in that? Arabella Steadham: then you have no need to ask me about it Arabella Steadham: if you already feel you know everything Arabella Steadham: I’m sorry I can’t really tell you a lot more Pixeleen Pixeleen Mistral: I am asking you because I want to know what you think Arabella Steadham: theres not a lot more to tell Arabella Steadham: I think I have written an apology to our users, which I felt more important than anything else Pixeleen Mistral: really?
Skills and Phox chill out – and reload
Jessica Lyon: I think what she is trying to say Pixeleen is that regardless of what she tells you, you will inevitably twist it in such a way as to generate the most controversial angle possible Pixeleen Mistral: what about the owner of the iheartanime.com web site? Pixeleen Mistral: does he get an apology too? Arabella Steadham: what about him Jessica Lyon: We made a public apology to our users, it is a genuine apology. We hope our users will take it as what it is. Arabella Steadham: My concern is our users Arabella Steadham: as I have said Arabella Steadham: my concern is not for creators of malicious viewers Pixeleen Mistral: but the web site that you ran the DDOS against – that is not your concern? Arabella Steadham: there was no DDoS Arabella Steadham: you know this Pixeleen Mistral: true – it failed Arabella Steadham: there was no DDoS Arabella Steadham: bottom line Jessica Lyon: the iheartanime website suffered no down time as far as I am aware. Jessica Lyon: surely, you must realise if a ddos attempt was truly made.. there would have been downtime right? Arabella Steadham: excuse me one moment please, I will be back in 2 minutes Pixeleen Mistral: so its OK for other sites to do the same thing to modular systems? Arabella Steadham: (door) Pixeleen Mistral waits Tyken Hightower: Back! Tyken Hightower: Oh god, Pixeleen is here? Tyken Hightower: Why? Jessica Lyon: There was no damage done. The website in question suffered no downtime or lag. Thus if someone wanted to do the same to our website providing it was done the same way, there would be no difference? Pixeleen Mistral: I have heard that some websites pay based on bandwidth consumed
At this point I am killed again, so the interviews will have to conclude via IM from a safe distance.
Fractured Crystal is missing – was he grounded for DDOSing?
Jessica Lyon: did you get ejected? Pixeleen Mistral: why do you keep killing reporters? Jessica Lyon: I did not, I’m asking if you were ejected. Jessica Lyon: and by whom. Pixeleen Mistral: this is the third time and that is my limit Pixeleen Mistral: no way I can say this is an accident Pixeleen Mistral: [17:57] Jessica Lyon: There was no damage done. The website in question suffered no downtime or lag. Thus if someone wanted to do the same to our website providing it was done the same way, there would be no difference?
[17:58] Pixeleen Mistral: I have heard that some websites pay based on bandwidth consumed
Pixeleen Mistral: what is your response to my question? Pixeleen Mistral: besides killing me again Jessica Lyon: the answer was, perhaps some do. However iheartanime does not afaik. Pixeleen Mistral: thank you
Pixeleen Mistral: ok Arabella your guys killed me again Arabella Steadham: I was away when you disappeared so I do not know. As it is, I feel everything has been said Pixeleen Mistral: thank you for your time and I wish you luck in your future endeavors
Yesterday, Linden Lab's interim CEO Philip Rosedale and CFO/COO Bob Komin did a talk and Q&A session in Second Life focused on where things were at, and where things were going. This week, on The Virtual Whirl, we're going to take a look at that session and see if some sense can't be made of it all.
Virtual environments have a generally poor reputation in many quarters, particularly in the mass-media. Much of that reputation is ill-deserved, and some of it is entirely fabricated (eg: by the mass-media).
This week, we cover the final installment of our summarized history of Second Lifeand Linden Lab (check out the first installment or the second, if you missed them). It's only possible to cover a tiny fraction of the events that took place in the space we have here, but the highlights paint an interesting picture.
We'll be working our way from 2008 to June 2010, and looking at what future directions we expect from there.
Service-based viewers for Second Lifeare a little different to the standard kind of viewer software that users might be used to. Standard viewers are downloaded to your PC, run on them and talk directly to the servers. Service-based viewers (also sometimes referred to as 'cloud-based') are either running on a remote server through a web interface, or running on a cloud (or other remote system) and sending data and graphics to a thin client that you run locally. The ill-fated Vollee client was one such example, and Comverse is another.
Most Some of the (relatively few) extant viewers for mobile devices (iPhones, iPads, et al), and web-based Second Lifeviewers like AJAX Life are service-based viewers (as are a number in development), and Linden Lab seems bent on closing them down.
This week, we cover the second installment of our summarized history of Second Lifeand Linden Lab (or check out part one, if you missed it). From 2005, there's an impossible amount of material to cover, but there are some interesting stories lurking among it all.
Join us as we work our way through some of the interesting highlights from 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The last time we saw any statistical data on overall awareness of intellectual property issues, it seemed that awareness of copyright and trademarks was quite appallingly low - and actual accurate knowledge about them was a very rare thing indeed.
Surprisingly few people seem to know their way around the don't-do basics, and with record numbers of trademarks being registered in recent years, it is actually nice to see that some online operators have got a firm grip on things this year.
Honestly, if you tossed a press release on our collective desk touting your virtual environment or MMOG having items or outfits available in support of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa[TM] ... well, it'd probably cause an avalanche of pizza boxes ... but after we got the mess cleared, we'd probably assume that your promotional stuff was littered with unlicensed FIFA trademarks. It's happened before.
Second Life has just seen its seventh anniversary (called its seventh birthday, only it technically isn't -- the original birthday is in March, but the anniversary is in June. There's history there). It's also traditionally a time when Linden Lab and Second Life users most often treat each other as enemies and obstacles; and it is a time for retrospectives and for considering the future.
With the departure of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon (the press release release says "stepping down," but the day prior to the release many Linden staffers were saying that Kingdon was fired) Linden Lab has hit a turning point -- or the end of another era.
Accordingly, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to look at the history of Second Life, starting back in 1999 and continuing to the present day. Or at least as much as we can cover the ten-year history of something so rich and diverse in the available space.
Second Life is quite legitimately a phenomenon (and even won an Emmy award). It was also something of an accident, since it wasn't what Linden Lab started out to make.
TechCrunch has announced more changes in the works for Linden Lab's troubled Second Life virtual world. On the heels of a move that laid off 30 percent of its workforce, the company has announced that CEO Mark Kingdon will be stepping down and giving way to Linden founder Philip Rosedale in an interim capacity. Additionally, CFO Bob Komin has taken on the role of COO.
Linden has yet to announce a definitive reason for the upper-management restructuring, but many are speculating that the company will be looking to add a CEO with experience in the burgeoning social networking scene.
Rosedale, posting on the Linden blog, had the following to say regarding the moves: "Our thinking as a team is that my returning to the CEO job now can bring a product and technology focus that will help rapidly improve Second Life. We need to simplify and focus our product priorities - concentrating all our capabilities on making Second Life easier to use and better for the core experiences that it is delivering today. I think that I can be a great help and a strong leader in that process."
Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Most things in the world operate on faith. Governments, currencies, intellectual property, human rights and brands all require certain minimum levels of belief and confidence in order to function.
When it comes to virtual environments, as I've maintained in the past, faith is critical.
Staff have been dropped from market-development, business development, engineering, quality assurance, human resources, community and executive management. Hardest hit this week are community and customer-advocacy roles and quality-assurance/testing.
What isn't hard to see is why these cuts were made, and in fact, why they are vital to Linden Lab as a going concern. At least it isn't hard to see when you're looking in the right place.
Back in April, we observed the departure of what we estimate to be approximately 5% or so of Linden Lab's total headcount. Some churn is to be expected, of course, especially in a tech company. It seemed a little odd that the positions didn't appear to have been advertised or refilled, but sometimes that happens out of sight. Last week, a Lab spokesperson confirmed for us that the Lab still had in excess of 300 staff.
This week, however, we're actually becoming quite concerned as there are signs of what seems to be a significant series of layoffs in progress at Linden Lab.
It has long been a matter of considerable debate among virtual-environment pundits about what constitutes an 'active user'. In some ways, subscription MMOGs have it a lot easier than many other kinds of virtual environment. You can always count paying subscribers, and that's all that matters.
In a general-purpose virtual environment, free-to-play or 'freemium' model, though, counting active users is important. Trends in active users measure the health of your user communities, as well as allowing you to credibly measure your virtual-world's e-peen compared to that of the competition.
The Tech Virtual (which has been open now since 2008) acts as a center for the creation of reusable (and frequently interactive) science and innovation based concepts and exhibits, and offers US$ design prizes for exhibits which demonstrate fundamental principles in a variety of areas. Even the museum design itself is a collaborative effort, and the museum is providing prototypes for the construction of physical museum spaces.
Every two weeks, Massively Mobile brings you the latest news, guides and analysis about MMOs on mobile devices. Covering iPhone, iPad and Android platforms, we're on the lookout for the next generation of MMOs.
In the last column, I covered a number of iPhone apps for MMOs. Some kept you connected to the game world, others offered you information at your fingertips, while still others were entire games unto themselves. Today I continue with the second half of the list starting with Final Fantasy XI all the way through Wizard101. In the next Massively Mobile column, I will focus specifically on World of Warcraft mobile apps for both the iPhone and the Android.
I have to admit that in the process of researching this column, I became obsessed with one particular app, Warrior Epic: Sagas. I don't even play the MMO, but I found the app to be one I returned to again and again throughout the week. It's very addictive, has an engaging storyline and is a dream come true for equipment micromanagers like myself. Check it out along with the rest of the apps after the jump.
In just a few more days, the winner of the second annual Linden Prize is going to be revealed, and the ten finalists have been announced. The stated criteria for the Linden prize are projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and "that improve the way people work, learn, and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world."
Therefore, I feel it only natural that I was rather astonished to see sionChicken/sionCorn in among the finalists, since it apparently does neither of these things.
Second Lifeis an immersive virtual environment. That is, it fosters attention and a quality of focus. You might subscribe to alternative definitions of the word "immersion", but focus and attention are the sense being used when developer/operators talk about an "immersive environment". They might intend one of the other meanings at other times - the word is a pretty slippery one.
The problem is that for most general-purpose virtual environments (eg: Second Life), that immersivity - that quality of attention and focus - kicks in pretty late. Only after you understand the basics of the context in which your actions, activities and experiences are taking place, do you have the satisfying sort of immersion that comes so easily to flat spaces like the Web and Facebook.
A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Seriously, I don't actually know anyone who says this other than myself; though I'm assured that there are some folks out there who do.
With that tragically underutilized platitude in mind, then, last week I posed a question to a spread of well-known virtual environment users (at least to those that I felt would actually respond) and collected the responses.
The question put to the respondents was "What's the single thing that the operators/developers could do to make you feel more satisfied with their virtual environment offering; what thing would help an operator keep you as a customer, or that would make some other operator more appealing than the one or ones you already have?"
Today, Linden Lab is releasing the quarterly metrics for Second Life, showing overall performance for Q1 2010, and contrasting that with the performance of previous quarters.
Linden Lab claims that Q1 2010 was an all-time high for the Second Lifeeconomy. We'll drill down through the metrics and see if that's so.
It's certainly taking time for people, organizations and businesses to learn how to obtain benefits from virtual environments, and it will take quite some time yet to figure out how to optimize those results. On the plus side, there are many hundreds of thousands of people working on that.
Working out how to effectively operate and manage virtual environments for large numbers of people, well, that's actually taking a lot longer. There are far fewer people actually involved in the process, and the same wheels are being reinvented over and over - and quite often, they seem to be square ones.
Reuters has closed its Second Life bureau after more than two years of in-depth coverage on the virtual world’s business and economy. Our technology team will continue to cover Second Life on Reuters.com.
Please explore this archive of our ground-breaking Second Life coverage.
SECOND LIFE, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Will the marketing of real world brands in Second Life find a second life?
Maybe. Nestea, a Coca-Cola brand, announced today it’s sponsoring Second Life’s “Junkyard Blues” venue.
Neither Nestea nor Junkyard Blues’ owners were available for immediate comment. But a visit to Junkyard Blues shows a “Sponsored by Nestea” banner over the main stage. Don’t try clicking on the banner though — it’s non-interactive.
The sponsorship, while modest, represents an affirmation of Second Life as a continued destination for real-world companies to market their goods. A recent survey by BusinessWeek ranked Coca-Cola as the most valuable brand in the world.
Nor does the choice by Coca-Cola of a Second Life blues venue seem coincidental. Last month, Second Life bluesman Von Johin signed a record deal in what’s believed to be the first virtual musician to break into the real-life mainstream.
Coca-Cola was among the companies that made a strong entrance into Second Life during the first wave of corporate marketing with a “virtual thirst” campaign. However in recent months, the company has stepped back its Second Life profile, taking the virtualthirst.com website offline.
Many Second Life users cherish their avatar identity so highly they sign up for other online networks, like LinkedIn or Twitter, under their avatar name. But Second Life enthusiasts who register for Facebook under their avatar name should watch out: the Syndey Morning Herald is reporting Facebook is terminating accounts it suspects don’t represent real-life names.
The SMH follows the story of Sydneysider Elmo Keep, who got banned from the site with no warning when Facebook officials suspected her name (which is real) was fake. Only by supplying copies of government-issued identity documents to Facebook was she able to get her account restored.
Valleywag has video of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg laying down the law. “You can’t be on Facebook without being yourself,” Sandberg says. “We kick you off.”
How many Facebook users are registered under their Second Life name, and could be banned at any moment under the policy? It’s impossible to tell, but even a casual search reveals that there could be more than a handful.
The latest poll average at RealClearPolitics has Barack Obama up 2.5 points over John McCain in the tight race for the White House, at 48.1 percent to 45.6 percent. But if the election was being held today in Second Life, Obama would win in a landslide.
Researcher Andrew Mallon of the Social Research Foundation, known in avatar form as Andy Evans, polled over 1,000 Second Life residents about their usage of Linden’s virtual world. But while he had an audience, Mallon threw in another question:
In the upcoming election, who do you plan to vote for (USA Citizens), or prefer (International residents)?
Among American citizens, Obama beats McCain handily in the unscientific poll.
Candidate
Respondents
Percent
Obama
224
45.6%
McCain
102
20.8%
Undecided
79
16.1%
I don’t plan to vote
29
5.9%
I prefer not to say
29
5.9%
Other
28
5.7%
491
100.0%
Among Second Life’s large population of non-American citizens, the preference for Obama is even stronger.
Candidate
Respondents
Percent
Obama
330
57.5%
McCain
41
7.1%
Undecided
41
7.1%
I don’t plan to vote
109
19.0%
I prefer not to say
37
6.4%
Other
16
2.8%
574
100.0%
Mallon’s poll remains open to the public until September 30, at which point he’ll publish his data about Second Life usage. Second Life residents can take the poll by clicking here.
SECOND LIFE, Sept 11 (Reuters) - OpenSim remains in pre-release and the interoperability standards to allow avatars to travel between virtual worlds are still being drafted. But that’s not stopping entrepreneurs from creating a fledgling industry around what’s to come.
Enter Metaverse Ink, which its creators say is the first search engine to find objects on both the Second Life Grid and in OpenSim worlds.
The product presents both a vindication and challenge for Linden Lab. OpenSim-using startups demonstrate the enduring faith of many in Linden founder Philip Rosedale’s vision for virtual worlds. But Metaverse Ink is also a competitive threat. In a July interview with Reuters Linden VP Joe Miller named “search services” as a potential revenue stream for his company in the coming age of interoperability.
Traditionally within Second Life, as residents grow more adept at building content they form in-world businesses and sell their creations to other users. Linden Lab frequently touts the number of users with a positive currency inflow — over 61,000 according to the latest statistics — in its marketing.
But with OpenSim in the works, some of Second Life’s most talented programmers are beginning to form businesses that compete directly against Linden Lab.
“Linden Lab’s search is bad, it’s like AltaVista in the old days,” said Metaverse Ink co-founder William Cook (Second Life: Felix Wakmann), a computer science professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Cook and co-founder Cristina Videira Lopes (Second Life: Diva Canto), a computer science professor at the University of California at Irvine, have designed a series of automated programs, called “bots,” to search through both Second Life and OpenSim. The results of their searches are indexed and made searchable to users, in much the same way Google does for the World Wide Web.
To date the MI database catalogs over two million virtual objects, spread over 100,000 regions.
Problems with Linden’s built-in search functionality have been ongoing, and this isn’t the first time a third party has tried to create an independent virtual worlds search engine. A similar attempt to index Second Life by the Electric Sheep Company last year was abandoned after a protest campaign by Second Life users over privacy concerns.
MI says their product respects user wishes. “We’re only publishing things marked ‘for search,’” Lopes said. “These bots can ’see’ everything, but not everything should be seen.”
Cook said his new company isn’t yet looking for venture capital, and is currently focusing on attracting users beyond MI’s current average of about 900 a day. A third MI partner from Techcoastworks, a California-based incubator, is helping to commercialize the product.
But Cook, a serial entrepreneur, has worked with VC firms in the past, having raised US$60 million for a previous start-up from sources including Benchmark Capital, which also funded Linden Lab.
Lopes said MI is the first company to be indexing OpenSim worlds for search. But how does she feel that Linden Lab has said search is an area it wants to explore in the future?
Lopes paused. “Well, we’re doing it already,” she said.
SECOND LIFE, Sept 7 (Reuters) - As they have every year for four years, the Second Life faithful tore themselves away from their computers for a weekend of real-life travel to celebrate Linden Lab’s virtual world at SLCC, the Second Life Community Convention.
But this year far fewer of them came out.
SLCC was in Tampa this year, and some said hurricane fears were keeping people at home. Others blamed a sluggish real-world economy and rising airfare prices. Event organizers said only 400 people attended SLCC this year, half of last year’s attendance in Chicago.
Notably absent from the conference were any real-world businesses from outside the virtual worlds industry, or the consulting firms that only last year built Second Life presences for real-world brands. “We invited the Electric Sheep Company and Rivers Run Red, but both apparently decided they didn’t want to attend,” said SLCC organizer Peter Lokke (Second Life: Crucial Armitage).
“In terms of external business use of Second Life, what we see now isn’t marketing but businesses using Second Life for things like training and meetings,” said Linden Lab’s Glenn Fisher at a panel on SLCC’s sparsely-attended business track. Unlike last year’s conference in Chicago, most of the discussions revolved around issues of relevance only to in-world L$-based enterprises.
Fisher argued businesses were still using his company’s virtual world despite the lack of attendance at SLCC. “Businesses are keeping it quiet because they see being in Second Life as a competitive advantage.”
Second Life founder Philip Rosedale kicked off the event at a Saturday morning breakfast where he was received with warm but not ecstatic applause.
“Last year when I was here I had the ‘Missing Image’ T-shirt,” Rosedale said, alluding to his apology for bugs at SLCC 2007. “I think we made pretty good progress.”
The Second Life community has its own ideas. New Linden CEO Mark Kingdon followed Rosedale and asked the crowd: “We’re working hard to improve stability. Are you seeing that?” But Kingdon’s question was met with a stony silence from the crowd.
A handful of sessions about open source attracted large crowds with people sitting in the aisles and standing in the back of the room.
But the breakout star of SLCC was the burgeoning virtual world educational community. Second Life’s teachers ran three tracks simultaneously all weekend and held an extra full day of sessions on Friday before SLCC formally started. The educators had their own parties, programs, and event name (”SLEDcc”), acting as a conference-within-a-conference.
While the interest of real-world companies and the consulting firms catering to them has waned, most attendees weren’t bothered. Talks formal and informal ran all weekend, with attendees bragging to each other about scoring invites to the exclusive Linden Lab corporate party. And on Saturday night, Second Life dressed up for a night of kinky fun at Kevin Alderman’s (Second Life: Stroker Serpentine) annual “Leather & Lace Ball.”
But even Alderman’s masquerade ball reflected the more modest nature of SLCC this year. Fewer partygoers dressed up in costume than last year, and there was nary a furry in sight.
Nicolas Barrial (Second Life: Nick Rhodes) claims to have been among the first 1000 users of Second Life and the first French national with an avatar. He traveled 14 hours from Paris to Tampa for the event.
Barrial reveled in the chance to link with friends old and new. “First and foremost, SLCC is like a family gathering,” he said.
A year ago at the Second Life Community Convention in Chicago, Reuters asked: What will the next year bring in Second Life?
Some of those predictions didn’t come true. Jeska Linden’s hope for open-sourced servers didn’t happen (although OpenSim is doing something very similar), and Izzy Linden’s prediction of 20 million avatars didn’t materialize (total registrations just topped 15 million). Other forecasts, like whether Second Life residents enjoy better sex or a more stable environment than they did a year ago, remain a matter of personal opinion.
But with an eye towards the future, once again Reuters asked SLCC: What will the next year bring in Second Life?
Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life.
“More use of Second Life to support education and business collaboration.”
Dick Dillon (”Coughran Mayo”), Addiction Recovery Professional
“OpenSim is a reality which is coming. The Second Life Grid isn’t the only place avatars will hang out.”
Chadrick Baker, virtual worlds consultant, former Linden Lab employee
“It depends on what Linden does! I see Linden having some serious competition.”
“Phoenix Linden” (declined to give real-life name), Linden Lab employee
“We’ll go six months without a central server crash.”
“We see virtual worlds going in the same direction the World Wide Web did. A company like Reuters will be able to host its own virtual world without relying on Second Life.”
Peter Lokke (”Crucial Armitage”), SLCC Chief Organizer
“There’s a lot more competition in-world. People aren’t going to be making as much money in Second Life as they used to.”
Chris Collins (”Fleep Tuque”), SL Education Track Organizer
“The development of the metaverse moves as slow as molasses. I don’t expect much change at all.”
When a question was asked on Saturday about poor Second Life performance on the Apple Macintosh, Philip Rosedale leapt up from the SLCC audience and took the microphone.
“We’re serious about support for the Mac,” Rosedale said. “But we’ve had our problems with Apple.”
Linden employee “Phoenix Linden” joined in, saying Apple doesn’t release information about their proprietary video card drivers in a timely fashion, making it hard for Linden to keep the Mac version of the viewer running smoothly.
Rosedale said Linden had done a good job with the Mac viewer despite the difficulty working with Apple. “We have access to crash rates,” Rosedale said. “Crash rates on the Mac are the same as on the PC. Frame rates too.”
Linden Lab and OpenSim developers shared the stage at an SLCC panel called “Open Software For Open Worlds,” and said there was nothing in the works to support spending Linden dollars anywhere but on the Second Life Grid.
During Q&A, Mike Lorrey (Second Life: Intlibber Brautigan) told the panelists he thought Second Life’s “killer app” was money — Linden’s own virtual currency and residents’ ability to start a Second Life business and turn a profit.
Could the Linden Dollar ever come to OpenSim worlds? Linden’s director of open source development Rob Lanphier said he had no idea how to make that work.
“We’re not going to pretend we know how to export that in a way that protects Second Life’s economy,” Lanphier said. “I can’t project a timeline.”
Leading OpenSim developer Adam Frisby disagreed with Lorrey on the importance of virtual currency to the Second Life experience.
“Money doesn’t belong in the core [OpenSim] product build,” Frisby said. “Better to ask again in six or nine months.”
So what has Second Life founder Philip Rosedale been up to since handing over control of Linden Lab to new CEO Mark Kingdon four months ago?
Hanging out, mostly. “I’ve had a really relaxing summer,” a broadly smiling Rosedale told Reuters.
Rosedale had just come out of the morning breakfast at the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa, where he praised Kingdon’s leadership of the company he started. But Rosedale was quick to add he wasn’t done with Second Life or Linden Lab. These days, he’s concentrating on two projects: Working on improving Second Life’s user interface, and efforts to spread Second Life technology to developing nations.
But Second Life fans shouldn’t expect interface problems to be solved soon. “Look at Lively or Vivaty, they’re dealing with the same thing. This is a hard problem,” Rosedale said. “If there was a trivial solution, we would have done it already.”
SECOND LIFE, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Second Life users who frequently access the Internet from consumer-grade computers and laptops are about to find keeping touch with other avatars a lot easier.
Yesterday Linden Lab announced the launch of “SLim,” pronounced “slim,” an instant-messaging client that allows users to communicate with users inside Linden’s virtual world without running Second Life.
“When you’re running a system that doesn’t have a 3D card, SLim allows you to take your friends list with you,” said Linden VP Joe Miller. “Visually it looks a lot like other IM apps.”
Second Life only runs well on high-end gaming machines. On many computers, particularly laptops, the Second Life viewer software runs so slowly even typing can be difficult. Miller said SLim was designed to tackle that problem.
The software will tie to an avatar’s friends list of contacts, and users inside Second Life will be able to see who’s on SLim but not in 3D virtual space.
In addition to sending text messages in and out of Second Life (or to other SLim users) like AOL’s AIM or Google’s Gtalk, the SLim client will support voice-over-IP calls in a manner similar to eBay’s Skype.
One notable feature of SLim will be support for VoIP voicemail. Users who register for the service will be able to set up a voicemail greeting and accept VoIP messages of up to five minutes in length while offline, Miller said. Linden’s servers will email the voice message to its recipient as an MP3 file.
Miller said the service is expected to debut in a “First Look” version of the Second Life client software next week. Participation in SLim and voicemail will be on an opt-in basis, and users can set the destination email address for voicemail to a different address than the payment contact for their secondlife.com account.
The service will be available on all platforms which support Second Life, including Windows, Macintosh, and Linux environments.
SECOND LIFE, Sept 3 (Reuters) - IBM, a company long at the forefront of exploring the business applications of virtual worlds, announced on Wednesday it has added support for 3D chat to its Lotus Sametime instant messaging software.
Users of “Sametime 3D” who are collaborating on a business document will be able to meet in a variety of virtual worlds, with IBM’s software handling the logins transparently, said Neil Katz, a company spokesman who worked on the project. Platforms supported by IBM include OpenSim, SecondLife, Forterra, and ActiveWorlds.
Katz said IBM will initially be working with select customers to test the new software’s capabilities, before rolling it out to the mainstream.
IBM foresees uses for corporate 3D chat such as walking customers through the replacement of a computer part by rezzing a 3D model. The Sametime 3D integration also smooths the process of importing data from an application such as Powerpoint into a virtual world.
While reliability issues have plagued virtual worlds such as Second Life, corporate applications may be made to run in a more stable manner, particularly using OpenSim.
“We’re creating a room with 20 or 30 users, we’re not building a persistent virtual world with thousands or hundreds of thousands of concurrent users,” he said.
SECOND LIFE, August 26 (Reuters) - The real-world economy may be slipping into recession, but the global slowdown isn’t impacting Second Life. According to recently released company statistics, Linden Lab’s in-world economy is larger than ever.
Over 61,000 avatars earned more Linden dollars (Second Life’s in-world currency) in July than they spent. That’s a 5.7 percent month-to-month gain in the number of profitable in-world businesses and the most on record.
User hours grew for the fourth consecutive month to 34.7 million in July, also a new record. However, the user hours number may be unreliable given the proliferation of computer-run avatars, or “bots,” throughout the Grid.
Economic activity grew briskly. Over US$9.5 million was traded on the LindeX, a 5.5 percent gain from June and a new record. User-to-user transactions in July stood at L$8.4 billion (about US$31.3 million), a 7.3 percent gain from June and the most currency transactions since the gambling ban in July of last year.
The sole dark spot for Second Life was the continuing decline in premium accounts. Linden shed an additional 1,410 premiums in July — over 45 a day and the seventh consecutive month premiums declined.
The principal benefit of a premium account is land-ownership privileges on Second Life’s mainland, where avatars have neighbors and enjoy a sense of community. Linden Lab has been unable to grow the mainland for three months due to weak demand, but private islands have grown to occupy 1.7 billion square meters, an 8.7 percent gain from June.
In recent months Linden Lab has announced a series of beautification and zoning initiatives in an attempt to restore user interest in the mainland.
SECOND LIFE, August 21 (Reuters) - Browser-based virtual world Vivaty, currently accessible through Facebook and AOL Instant Messenger will be embeddable by users on blogs and pages throughout the Web within the next two months, CEO Keith McCurdy said this week.
McCurdy also said Vivaty is internally testing the technology on the Firefox web browser, and expects to announce official support for Mozilla’s browser “in the next few weeks.” Presently Vivaty only runs within the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser on Windows.
There’s no timetable at present to extend support for Vivaty to the Macintosh, he said.
While every virtual world is scrambling for users and attention, the competition closest to Vivaty may be Lively by Google. Like Vivaty, Lively is a browser-based virtual world embedded in IE. Vivaty and Lively launched on the same day.
McCurdy said Google’s presence only validates Vivaty’s idea. “Before we launched, people asked: Why be in the browser?” he said. “After Google launched — or echo-launched — we get almost none of those questions.”
“Their product looks very different. They have a cartoon look, we have more of a Sims look,” he said.
Vivaty’s goal is to allow avatars to create a virtual space that ties into the rest of their web presence. Already users can hang a virtual picture frame on their wall, and have it display images from a Flickr account. Tighter integration between Vivaty and Facebook (already a partner) and Twitter are all in the works.
“People will have a lot more ability to pull stuff in from the rest of the Internet,” he said. “Brands love that.”
Coke Zero and Target are early Vivaty branding partners. “Second Life has brands coming into Second Life, but then they’re locked in,” McCurdy said. “We turned that inside out.”
Embedding a Vivaty scene on a corporate web site is more attractive to advertisers, he said.
Further expansion of Vivaty Create, a user-generated content tool, is planned. McCurdy doesn’t expect problems with pornography or griefing. “We’ll have people who will check content, and you’ll have the community check content,” he said.
But while McCurdy wants to further open up his virtual world to outside developers and add more avatar customization, he doesn’t see that as Vivaty’s draw.
“We’re not trying to be a 3D modeling program,” he said. “We’re erring on the side of simple, easy-to-use, and mass-market.”
The newest destination for talent scouts looking to sign fresh acts is Second Life.
Boutique label Reality Entertainment has signed popular Second Life musician Von Johin to a record deal. Wagner James Au runs a lengthy interview with Johin, who performs weekly shows in the virtual world.
For the most part, however, he no longer has any interest playing live in person. “This is more fun,” he says, referring to his virtual stage. “No gas costs, no travel, worldwide audience, exciting new people, no smoke, no drunks on the road, no hassles.”
But what does “sign a record deal” really mean in 2008? The Metaverse Journal takes a contrarian approach to the news: “Any individual can now publish their music worldwide on iTunes using services like TuneCore for the princely sum of US $9.99 per year.”
Regardless, any deal can only be seen as encouraging news for Second Life’s burgeoning music scene.
11-9-6
This is going to be my journal of my doings in Second Life®. If you don't know Second Life is a virtual world, technically a MMORPG (Massively Multi-user Online Role Playing Game). I've heard stories of people quitting their real job and just surviving on the money they make in Second Life®. Now that's something that gets my attention. Not that I want to quit my job, but I like making money. I think there has to be a way to make some money off this site since so many other people are doing it. If Scion has a car dealership in this world, selling 3d models of their cars and Lexus is considering it, then I have to think that there can be some money made here. My plan is to create some 3d applications and sell them through a kiosk based store. So I never have to be there and as long as I make more money than my monthly charge, I'm in the gravy.
So I created my character yesterday and of course I had to give him a mohawk. You can really chose every aspect of the character to customize, from the angle of the eyebrows to the amount of wrinkles in their pants. There are a lot of people selling virtual clothes and people offering to make the avatars (that's the character that represents you on the screen) look just like you or anything else you like. I've also heard that there are people that are walking around looking like a T-Rex but I haven't seen that yet. I have seen elephants for sale here. I don't know what I'd do with it but I'm thinking about it because it sounds pretty cool.
So I'm thinking of all the ways that I can make money in this virtual world and I've got a few good ones. I was amazed at all the porn related shops that there are, so I don't want to milk a dead cow so I'm not going down that road, but I did have to investigate it and people are actually paying for sex in this game. Not for real world sex but for cyber sex with 3d characters. I couldn't believe it when I stumbled across a section of town that was filled with escorts! So I had to check it out. I wasn't looking to have cybersex so I was able to talk her down to 100L (1 cent US) to have her play the lapdance animations and the blowjob animations.
