What's Wrong With the Emerald Devs?

It occurred to me today when I saw post after post accusing me of bullying or ranting or telling falsehoods or blah blah blah that the people in this thread on the official LL blog simply may not be aware of just how nasty the Emerald devs *are*.

Gwyn may never get it through her head that the same people who caused her such havoc by distributing a malicious viewer with her reputable name attached to it are the same people who have killed my chickens, crashed my sims, and harassed me and my tenants.

They just maybe never followed this drama that began in August with the drunken assholes on the Woodbury University party bus writing Ban Prok! on the wall of Linden Lab (!), and then the wave of severe griefing to which I was subjected, and my writing about the problems with the Emerald Viewer, which I attacked as a cultural problem and as a specific set of features that were harmful of others and which I described as a center of griefing and harassment of me because of that writing. You can read those past posts here, here, and here.

They may never have followed in fact the sordid side of some of the Emerald devs on the JIRA. Discrete Dreamscape posted this provocative and destructive copybot like patch on the JIRA and demanded these "linksets"; months went by before Rob Linden finally laconically said, "

"Import/export, as implemented like this, is not something we plan to implement. We're also not inclined to use this tracker as a distribution point for this patch, hence we're removing it from here." 

Gosh, thanks for backing up the economy and IP, Rob, you're a hero.

Other coders, even, begged him not to  post patches like this, it gave the third-party viewers a bad name.

[ Show » ]

Rob Linden added a comment - 02/Aug/09 10:08 PM Import/export, as implemented like this, is not something we plan to implement. We're also not inclined to use this tracker as a distribution point for this patch, hence we're removing it from here.

Discrete is still in the current list of Emerald devs:

Chalice Yao

Chris Tuchs

Cryogenic

Danny Nolan
Discrete Dreamscape

Hyang Zhao

Jcool410
LordGregGreg Back
Madgeek

Phox

Skills Hak

taladar

theGenius Indigo

WoLf
Zwagoth Klaar

Some of these names aren't SL names and who knows who they are inworld, but Discrete Dreamscape is the same person who posted this provocative copybot-like proposal on the JIRA, and posted a patch which enabled said copying function, with a chorus from the usual suspects, like the fake scientist and extropian Morgaine Dinova, who cynically and nihilistically calls for this patch to be implemented precisely because all the naive bunnies in SL should "get how it really works".

Discrete Dreamscape is missing from the People List and has been for weeks -- he's likely gone for good. Yet from all accounts, he's still active on the Emerald development.

In his own self-justifying posts, where he "tells the truth but still kills your chickens" as he put it infamously to me, he claims that his links-set (the patch) wasn't really Emerald, or was off to the side of Emerald, or Emerald, if it did this, would check perms...or something.

You can read some more about it here from Tenshi's sleuthing, with the usual caveats about her. She's quick to discount any DNA link between Discrete's patch and Emerald, but that's silly; he's an Emerald dev FFS, and his patch sat on the JIRA, FFS, and that's what it's all about.

According to a post on Gwyn's blog, Discrete may be the one responsible for "Vlife" which was a malicious version of Emerald (I tend to think Emerald itself contains the seeds of malice due to its spirit of protecting oneself and not considering others, but generally it's accepted to speak of those other viewers that have copybot functioning as malicious rather than Emerald itself, which at least goes through the fig leaf of not containing these functions).

In discussing this every time, Emerald devs are keen to avoid mentioning Discrete Dreamscape's patch, DD himself is keen to say that he was making something 'before" Emerald or "that isn't in Emerald anymore" or "that got away from him and got taken by others" or whatever. None of this is persuasive.

The easily-facilitated presence of the Woodbury goons on the Emerald sims, like Jim Korpov and Kovino Firehawk, some of the worse and most regular griefers in fact, even within in the Emerald Management Group lets us know that there's more here than meets the eye. My hunch is that when this story is finally over, something that may take years, we will discover that these malicious viewers, which have the finger prints of Eddy Stryker on them, could well be a piece of industrial sabotage. This is just a hunch; I have no proof of this than the Eddy connection -- Discrete Dreamscape thanks him. But it's a question we have to ask:  what is the relationship of Intel and its employee John Hurliman/Eddy Stryker to the Emerald Viewer, to Discrete Dreamscape's patch on the JIRA which had to be removed, and to any other third-party viewers in Sl that have malicious features, and controversial features and features that the Lindens want to bar? This question has to be asked -- and is legitimate to ask -- because of the competing nature of a product that Intel itself is making now. Eddy isn't so visible at all in SL and may not technically even log on much on that account, but in the interoperability group he is very active.

Read these half-literate posts from these anonymous kids on Gwyn's blogs which directly implicate the Emerald devs in the griefer viewers:

Also there is rumors going around that some of the emerald dev like alias turbo/Stalin Fallen which can also be found in LGG's group and Discrete DreamScape are the creator of vlife. Another rumor that also went around that cryogenic blitz who was also one of the emerald dev was the creator of cryolife who has also destroyed sl without source. Phox who is also on the emerald dev created the client called phoxsl which was also a greifer client and rumor has it he is also currently working on vlife. The client creator nexii of flexlife and shoopedlife is also working on the emerald project. PSl which is also a closed source client made by none other than chalice Yao had also put a function for physics freeze in his client which is like the only greifer tool because it dos's LL's sims by freezing physics.

Replying to that.

I have found out from sources all of it is true. Half the emerald team also makes clients like this. Go check the emerald dev team for cryogenic blitz and you will find out he also made cryolife and the client called ruby. Alias turbo- also known as stallin fallen which can be found in lgg's group/phox/thomas shikami/tyk3n are dev of vlife. Each of them have also made their own personal client except alias turbo. LGG is clean. Creator of Rivlife also contain client spoofing and a few other non friendly functions. Name Short which is also one of the emeralds dev also made a seperate client called kungfu on the emerald client detection list. Flexlife/ shoopedlife creator named nexii is also working on the emerald dev. PSL which is a closed source illigal client but follows tos is made by chalice yao and his client does indeed have one greifer option which is object freeze which freezes all the physical objects in the region

You can read more allegations there on Gwyn's blog, and it is impossible to know if they are true, but it's interesting that "one of their own" shows up to rat them out like that.

The entire purpose of all those communications may have been simply to try to portray LordGregGreg as "clean" -- and who is to know?

Chalie Yao comes on and admits he worked on the physics freezing. It might be that this is how chickens were killed, because I always wondered how they were able to kill them so quickly, when they didn't seem to have guns and push was turned off, and pushing them off world would have taken time. They are on physics, and freezing their physics may permanently wreck them, I don't know.

What Chalice doesn't realize is how lame and suspect he sounds when he outlines the intimate relations of all these people working in a close little group and then suddenly says, essentially, "why should you pin griefing on Emerald because of people who use its code?"

Here's what he wrote:

"No. Neil does not 'work on Emerald'. Nor does N3xis. They both have taken the Emerald source, and are making their own viewers with it. Flexilife, to my knowledge, being a legal client, and Neillife being a pile of permission violations and griefmaterial. It doesn't really surprise me that Neil has acted the way he did, in regards to Gwyneth and the notecard. But why this falls back on Emerald itself, as I said, I have no idea."

It's a staple of the opensource doctrine that because the code is open, anyone can take it and then the originators of it "aren't responsible anymore". But that's just what has to stop. Of course they're responsible. In fact, that's one of the reasons why people prefer licensed proprietary code, because there's a company that takes responsibility and doesn't say "oh, we don't take any responsibility for something some guy coded using our code."

Read the rest of Gwyn's blog page for the hair-raising admissions of all his griefing features that this Neil writes out. It doesn't differ in cash or kind from the kind of self-justifying screeds we see in this thread on the official blog.

But most telling about the nature of these Emerald devs is this claim:

Expand ⇗ Registered

sick0dashiz 2 months ago in reply to Gwyneth Llewelyn

ummm gwyn have you even looked at the original emerald viewer as compared to neils viewer. you want to sit here and trash his viewer because it has copybot.... ok... then trash emerald as well seeing as how you can do the same thing with emerald. neil didnt just add that to emerald. EMERALD ALLOWS IT BY DEFAULT. so before you get your britches in a wad and start bawin about one persons item while comparing it to anothers. take 2 seconds and have a good look at the two items. are they the same? is that which walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck not a duck? there are ways to use the emerald viewer to hack free uploads to second life. inside emerald there are ways to copybot any prim item visable to you, and inside emerald there are ways to crash sims. not that this is a surprise really. neil is right. look at the emerald development team. lets see. jaycool410 wildcat who mind you was permabanned for hacking LL servers. who goes by the name alias now. which oh wow that name was permabanned too and what might you ask for? not for picking up litter on the side walk thats for sure. then you add in cryo. another viewer that was and still is used to grief people and steal anything they wish with. so is anyone surprised that emerald has the power to copybot prims. crash sims and hack free uploads? NO. im not surprised. and people can sit here and say but they have changed their ways.... ok ye sure. they changed their ways. and this is why half of the dev team are jumping from one name to another because of permabans and scared half to death to let the world know who they are cause they will get banned. vlife is a rip off. pftt like id ever pay 50,000L for a free viewer. thats about dumb. which if i am not mistaken according to the GPL which is what LL uses. all viewers MUST RELEASE THIER SOURCE CODE. so lets see the source alias. chalice. cryo. they will never do it because then how can they continue to rape money from people that dont know any better. the viewer should be free no matter what. kthxbainao

Again, no way of checking, I merely bring it to the fore now so that people can contemplate:

Just who are these Emerald Devs?

As I've noted, the inworld group's founder, LSL Engineer, is gone from the People List for good.

Discrete Dreamscape is gone. A one time frequenter of Linden Office hours, where Aric Linden beamed at him and joshed with him about bug triages, he's likely permabanned -- and pro-tip -- not likely permabanned merely for killing my chickens but something more serious.

Escaped Phelan, who harassed me, and helped users in the Emerald group is gone also -- and likely not merely for swearing at me.

Fractured Crystal, all of 60 days of age, is one of the frequent cheerleaders of Emerald now in the Concierge List. What alt is he the main of?

Lonely Bluebird, born June 13, 2009, was the one who killed most of my chickens -- according to his fellow felon Discrete Dreamscape, who ratted on him lol. Lonely frequently and cynically harassed me -- he's not been around lately, I don't know why, he's still in the list.

Who are these guys that have such new accounts? Who were they before?

Skills Hak is Rodney Linden's friend who built his home/hangout for him, and once came to harass me, but has generally stayed away since being AR'd that time. A frequent fan and denizen of Linden office hours, to the point that some people think he *is* Rodney -- I don't think so.

Gnome Inkpen is born 2/09 but says he was really born in 2007 on his profile. What happened to that account?

Yet despite all thse obvious new accounts, that tend to back up the claim that these people "jump around," and despite their documented participation in griefing, Chalice rebuts everything said -- note my questions in italics:

Hokay, normally I don't answer to a pile of misinformation like this, but I feel like setting some things straight.

"then trash emerald as well seeing as how you can do the same thing with emerald. neil didnt just add that to emerald. EMERALD ALLOWS IT BY DEFAULT."

Emerald does not allow you to export any content you aren't the owner of, and that isn't fullperm. Neil allows any setup of prims to be exported, no matter what the perms, no matter if you are the owner or not.

QUESTION: But wait, why should you get to export items that you are merely the owner of, but did not create? That may go against the creator's wishes.

QUESTION: Is that because Discrete's patch was taken out/disabled/downplayed?

"there are ways to use the emerald viewer to hack free uploads to second life."

Yes. it's called 'file -> upload image', and checking the 'temporary' checkbox. Upload of tempoary images is free through LL's system, as the images do not get stored on the asset server, but only the sim you are in, and they vanish again soon..usually within the hour.

Question: Yes, we've all heard that a million times about how they are only "client-side" blah blah. But...what tweaks might be easily made to keep them there on that sim for more than an hour, and simulating having in fact uploaded them?

"and inside emerald there are ways to crash sims."

I admit I am amused by this. Where are you getting such a clever tidbit of information? Actually, can you please point at the code that does this? The source can be gotten from our homepage.

"so is anyone surprised that emerald has the power to copybot prims. crash sims and hack free uploads? NO. im not surprised."

No, you are just misinformed about alot of details.

Question: Misinformed? Or in fact asking the right questions about things that the devs aren't letting on to?
"and this is why half of the dev team are jumping from one name to another because of permabans and scared half to death to let the world know who they are cause they will get banned."

We...do? Is that why we list our in-world names on the homepage? See http://www.modularsystems.sl/index.php?option=c...

I guess that's also why I only have one main account that is close to 1000 days old. I'm such a mean namejumper.

But that's completely false. Two of your people are GONE from the list, and their accounts were new. Where's Discrete Dreamscape? Where's LSL Engineer?! Fractured Crystal was born August 29, 2009! Lonely Firebird, that VICIOUS chicken-killer, was born June 13, 2009. What the hell! You are LYING here about the namejumping and DISTRACTING from the OBVIOUS.

"which if i am not mistaken according to the GPL which is what LL uses. all viewers MUST RELEASE THIER SOURCE CODE."

Agreed. All parties who obtain the binaries are supposed to be able to request the source code, and it needs to be handed to them. My PSL was like this, Emerald releases the source with every binary release.

Question: so why can't you register under the Lindens' new program?!

"alias. chalice. cryo. they will never do it because then how can they continue to rape money from people that dont know any better."

I did not have a hand in vlife creation or distribution, nor was I ever in possession of it. Or any other ToS breaking viewer at all. Actually, I rather clearly started when I first heard about these viewers, and my opinion of them in my first comment of this blog post. I also stated that to my knowledge, none of those viewers are created/spread/leaked anymore. You will have to look into the direction of Neil or the PN for that, who quite openly are making them now. I don't see a rant of yours over there tho.

Question:  So, could you confirm or deny if Discrete, your CURRENT dev and others did?! And your claim that rogue viewers aren't spread any more, um, how does that work with stuff that is copyable?! And, er. opensource!

All in all, invest a little more time in backing up your claims with more recent and valid information before dropping a Blog comment like that. It would make your words more plausible instead of far from the truth.

Question:  Um, well I did invest time. Lots. Lots of field data. And I can only repeat: why so many young accounts? where are Discrete Dreamsape and Escaped Phelan and for that matter, LSL Engineer?

Reading about Chalice Yao inworld, I see a key sign of connection to a variety of people, Skills Hak and Rodney Linden, and that's of course IN SILICO, which is the cyberpunk roleplay sim.

But if you read further in this long wad of mutual recriminations among the guilty, you will come to the same conclusion anyone would: that there is more to Emerald than meets the eye, that in fact they do have the creation of rogue viewers in their past, that they are playing a double game, and that they hope to get monetary advantage out of this and reputational enhancement out of this.

Then the question is, who is using them? Who stands behind them?

Comments

[Pins]

You're amazingly stupid. I say this because 90% of this entire thing is wrong. Don't you know that v-life predates Emerald by at least one year?

Are you stupid? Seriously do some research and state FACTS instead of spitting out stupid false opinions.

[Catface]

Because everyone knows comments by the same kind of "anonymous" people you like to silence on your blog, are always reputable sources of information when they say something you like!

[Prokofy Neva]

Each time this discussion is had, we will flush out an Emerald dev who says "this is incredibly stupid, didn't you know Vlife was a year before Emerald?"

And duh, we heard that the first million times it was said.

And to repeat: if the Emerald devs who are the Emerald devs are the same people who made Vlife, then that shows their true nature.

I sure don't accept the thesis that someone can make a griefing viewer, and sell it, and use it to grief and/or steal content (that's the contention here), and then "go legit" and work on the Emerald viewer.

What changed about them? Nothing. Did their viewer become less violatory? Perhaps. But their nature is the same, and their intentions have been exhibited.

If the Emerald devs facilitated Vlife before they made Emerald, and facilitated Cryolife and Thugslyfe after they made Emerald, they are not exonerated just because they themselves chose to focus on Emerald and try to clean up their rep.

We have allegations on Gwyn's blogs by the script kiddies themselves that this is what Emerald devs had done, and they are very detailed accusations. Since they are anonymous, and this hotbed of "opensource" black-box intrigue isn't something we can really check, it could be false, but there are repeated detailed alegations and the questions have to be asked.

Furthermore, one fact that supports these allegations is that the Emerald devs have very young accounts 30-60 days, or sometimes they appear even with day-old or week-old alts in the group. And a number of them have gone missing from the People list.

Why?

If they were a reputable group doing no wrong, this wouldn't be happening. You can explain one person disapearing like this, but a half dozen? No.

When the Emerald devs are griefing just like PNs and woodburies and intertwined with them, then you REALLY have to start asking questions!

[Bystander]

Template for any conversation including Prokofy Neva.

_____: These are facts.
Prokofy Neva: Are they facts? Or are they in fact not facts but cover facts to hide the fact that in fact they are not facts.
_____: But they are the facts...
Prokofy Neva: But I believe these falsehoods! I would never be so idiotic to believe facts over falsehoods! Falsehoods are so much more exciting. I think you should know that (Insert verbiage here) and you are a complete (Insert choice vulgarity here)!
_____: Why are you so angry?
Prokofy Neva: Because even though you went no where near my chickens you are some way connected to the griefers who did! Even though the connection could be as small as using the same garbage can as the chicken killers.
_____: I'm going to leave you alone now.
Prokofy Neva: Is that some sort of threat!?!? I'm going to harass you for even and AR you!

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Bystander: You left out

PN: We _get_ that. [Text utterly ignoring what was supposedly gotten.]

[Skills Hak]

Haha, someone just pointed me to this.. You actually abuse reported me for harrassment(?) because i simply got teleported to your sim? Amusing.

Um, the only reason i "stay away" is - I don't care. You have nothing to offer and i don't have the time, nor do i see any need to bother reading or reacting to your rants. As for the rest of your insignificant troll-drivel, i'd like to stick to standard Linden Lab procedure: No comment;)

[NoFancy]

Emerald is like a majestic white whale. You should accept this, Captain Ahab.

[Chicken]

"When the Emerald devs are griefing just like PNs and woodburies and intertwined with them, then you REALLY have to start asking questions!"

Why? What's your problem?

Go eat your chickens.

http://prokofy-neva.blogspot.com/

[Darien Caldwell]

I can't help but wonder why so many people are coming from the same IP address? Don't the icons by the post denote IPs, or do they mean something else?

[Tengu Yamabushi]

"...the icons by the post denote ..." -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)

[Kyle]

One question still remains unanswered, WHY are there very very young accounts, to young to be this kind of work and not be older accounts. Clearly they are young accounts because their previous accounts have either been banned or they don’t want people to know who they really are, WHY? Someone from Emerald please answer that simple question.
Personally I don’t feel emerald is a griefing or malicious viewer myself. But, I do question the people behind it and their shady pasts, what Prok says, does make me wonder.

[Bystander]

What Prok says, does make me laugh.
Fixed.

[Alex]

The reason you're griefed at all, grandma is because you so richly deserve it and the reason people call for your banning is because you deserve that too.

There are people who never heard of Emerald who have now been polarized in its favor simply because of your wild-eyed ranting.

So go ahead, you senile old witch. Blabber on. Proponents of Emerald just love to see their ranks swell as a result.

[Darien Caldwell]

While the Sockpuppet theory is amusing, I don't think that's the case, given how frequently it's showing up. A more likely scenario is that either typepad assigns icons by geographical region (some blogs do this), or they are all using a popular proxy/anonymizer.

I'm betting on geography.

[Ann Otoole]

@darien - Change your name and email address and you get a different icon. Obviously not related to geography.

[AnnOtooleInSL]

Like so...

[criminal opensource bolshevik]

oh btw, transcript of our secret communist opensource meeting here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Blondin_Linden/3rd_Party_Viewer_Brown_Bag:_Session_1_29Oct09

[Micha Sass]

An Effervescing Elephant
with tiny eyes and great big trunk
once whispered to the tiny ear
the ear of one inferior
that by next June he'd die, oh yeah!
because the tiger would roam.
The little one said: "Oh my goodness I must stay at home!
and every time I hear a growl
I'll know the tiger's on the prowl
and I'll be really safe, you know
the elephant he told me so."
Everyone was nervy, oh yeah!
and the message was spread
to zebra, mongoose, and the dirty hippopotamus
who wallowed in the mud and chewed
his spicy hippo-plankton food
and tended to ignore the word
preferring to survey a herd
of stupid water bison, oh yeah!
And all the jungle took fright,
and ran around for all the day and the night
but all in vain, because, you see,
the tiger came and said: "Who me?!
You know, I wouldn't hurt not one of you.
I'd much prefer something to chew
and you're all to scant." oh yeah!
He ate the Elephant

[Beeflin]

"The reason you're griefed at all, grandma is because you so richly deserve it." Mere opinion, but it does show that the writer agrees with griefing. Funny how people can reveal more about themselves than what they think they're talking about.

[Prokofy Neva]

If v-life precedes Emerald by a year, um, as we know, that, uh, constitutes evidences of what these freaks were up to before they made Emerald. Duh?

BTW Pins is the same person writing racist spam today. Nice crowd, these Emerald devs and users.

[KT Furman]

Well, I thought I had submitted my post here, perhaps the tablet I was using didn't register the click on the "post" button. Either way I already wrote a rather long post on the SL blogs in response to yours that details a LOT of things I have found digging on just one of these people (Skills Hak)

BUT, interesting to note, as this speaks to their mentality, and would be particularly pointless to post there is something else I have found.

Skills' system, the CDS, connects to two bogus media servers. One of them being syscast.net

syscast.net no longer has a web page hosted on it's domain, but a cache of it quickly links it to Ash Qin (via the mention of quickfox).

Previously this site had been registered with a phony address, one that would just lead you to Tesco in the UK. This has since been changed. The new address is:

Burgermeister-Aurnhammer-Strase 35 a
Augsburg, 86199
Germany

Before anyone FREAKS OUT and says I'm posting someone's personal info, take a prozac and keep listening.

when you google this address, it leads you to: http://www.bachbauernhof.de/

And what is on that page? Looks like it's some sort of chicken farm.

Typical immaturity coming from the Emerald devs and their associates. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you what they are trying to refer to with that address.

[Prokofy Neva]

Yeah, I noticed them playing three-card monte with all those domain addresses, but I never clicked all the way through and saw the chickens. Sigh.

I'm happy to report that Hope2 and Charity hatched a new egg today, Faith. : ) Mother and baby are doing fine, after Mom killed Dad but he was revived with the injection kit. Mom's a scarce and will do that, so I've given Mom a physics-enabled toy to see if that will keep her from destroying our happy nuclear family : )

I thought you were going to post about Fractured Crystal's special alt-outer.

[whoever]

Why using Emerald in the first place? SL 2.1 can do a lot more and easier. The bouncing tits and other useless goodies are only a distraction for the keylogger inside. So go use emerald and be happy... or not...