Emerald POS

I just had someone at my store IM me. Here's what the IM looked like:

[6:20] Her Name: ?OTRv2?
6a78389Z-6fa0-4108-878c-0e36504478ec has requested an Off-the-Record private conversation. However, your viewer doesn't support OTR. Emerald Viewer does, see http://modularsystems.sl/ for more information about Emerald, and http://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ for more information about OTR.

Assuming she had a question, I tried to respond. This is what I got:

[6:20] Her Name's settings require OTR encrypted instant messages. Your message was not displayed.

How do I AR the emerald devs for advertising their POS like this? And how much trouble do I go to to support a customer using that POS?

That's one of the stupid things about Emerald. I believe that it's on by default. If I'm mistaken about that, then it's not stupid.

I've stopped using Emerald for everything except temporary uploads because I suspect that it's responsible for crashes and computer freezes. Double-click to TP was very useful but I can live without it. Other than that and the temp uploads, it doesn't have anything that I'd want and, if it's responsible for the crashes and computer freezes, then ithas things that I definitely don't want.

ETA:
Sorry - that's not an answer to your question.

If it were me in your place, I'd drop a notecard to the person because s/he probably doesn't realise what happened.

OTR is available by default, but the _required_ OTR thing is something an excessively paranoid user has to switch on manually. Her loss if she doesn't want to communicate with most people.

So, I typed up a notecard explaining the trouble and sent if off, and this is the resulting conversation:

[6:31] Her Name: sorry hope this is better
[6:31] Her Name: Didnt know that seting was on
[6:31] Anya Ristow: Hello
[6:31] Her Name: appologise
[6:31] Her Name: lolll
[6:33] Anya Ristow: Did you have a question?

Nine minutes later I'm still wondering what the hell she wanted.

Yeah, I'm going to do this for everyone using the emerald viewer.

NOT

Yep, they have to chose to enable the exclusive OTR mode. I disable the encryption because I fail to see any real need for it.

If 'required' is something that an Emerald user has to turn on, as Viktoria said, then I'd just ignore them after replying to the first IM. It's their choice, and their loss.

I can only think of one reason for it - to prevent LL from understanding the communications from their logs. And I can't think of any 'good' reason, as opposed to 'bad', for that.

Anya, you can try sending a notecard explaining the problem. The individual may not be aware that OTR is causing a problem. Not everyone using Emerald has the technological understanding to know the quirks of every feature/option. It's a learning process, as is most any viewer.

While it's not your issue if someone doesn't understand their own viewer, as a matter of Customer Service, sending them a notecard of what you saw, you may be assisting them in learning something that will give them a better experience with their own viewer as well as bring them back to your store. What level of Customer Service do you want to provide? It's your choice but so many are using Emerald, I think it might be wise to consider how many people you might alienate by not taking doing some sort of follow up?

As for the 'advertising', it's just a link to information about OTR. If you've no interest in finding out about it, no need to view the link. It is a bit spammy as worded (hmm, as is my post!) but others might complain if the notification only said that the individual has requested an OTR message and your viewer isn't capable. The link is an easy way to find out about OTR. Use or ignore, as needed.


Hope this helps, just my L$2 worth! And, yes, I am an Emerald user, enjoying many of its features (not into the jiggly boobs though.)


ETA: Oh, sure, i wrote all this and you already sent a notecard! Oh well.

Well, maybe she felt a little silly after finding out the setting was on and she hadn't been aware? It takes all kinds, for sure. But you still don't know if that notecard will be what makes her return to your store buying whatever it is she was looking for in the first place.

Also, you can just have the notecard, generically written, to hand to others with whom you may have a similar situation. Once it's written, no need to rewrite. If this is the first time you've had this come up, just keep in mind that the OTR option has been available in the Emerald viewer for a while now, and with the number of people using it, that's not a bad track record so far.

Dear emeral devs,

You super sekrit decoder ring is apparently able to determine that the intended recipient isn't wearing a decoder ring. So, why don't you tell the sender about it rather than the recipient?

Dumbasses.

Love,
Anya

You're assuming that the Emerald devs aren't going to do anything about this. Or that they'll decide to just ignore the problem because it will be fixed in the new Emerald Viewer 2.0, which comes out in a year or so, maybe.

They're not LL. They will probably fix this issue before long. No need to be bitchy about it.

It would probably be a good idea to add a line to your store policies indicating that customer support will not be handled over encrypted chat.

Assuming customers read that kind of thing.

The feature should have never been released with such a glaring and obvious defect in the first place.

Your IM will not go through, but you won't know it because the viewer won't tell you, and it won't let the recipient IM you to tell you it didn't go through.

Do the Emerald developers test their viewer at all?

So don't use it. Go back to the LL viewer and complain straight to LL when you find problems in it.

I'm not sure I see the need for the encryption features, and I DO see where it can get in the way. I find that setting it to "accept otr requests" covers all eventualities.

I use Emerald almost exclusively and it crashes no more than anything else. But then, my computer is no joke.

I don't really have any need for OTR but I live in the US.. People in other countries may not agree. People who use SL for serious RL business stuff may also not agree.

Yeah... I'm not fond of the paranoia stuff. I decline them, because honestly, I have nothing to hide from LL and anyone else listening in on my IM conversations is just going to get some rather boring drivel.

At first, my reaction was that EMERALD is not necessarily to blame here because the user has to actually change the default -- "required" is not the default, "request" is.

However, I then went and look at the preferences and this is what I found:



Since the web site is not useful to the average user and the Emerald comment specifically says that they "strongly recommend required", then yes, the Emerald folks in this particular case should be slapped a few times.
.

and just how much lag does this viewer generate?

Huh?!

If you're talking about the viewer in general then I suggest you just go and check it for yourself.

If you're referring to the OTR, any current PC will perform encryption of short IM's in an unnoticeable time frame. Bear in mind that typical business (laptop) PC's will be doing AES128/256 bit encryption dynamically of disk data which is pretty transparent and this little OTR encryption is a drop in the ocean.

On the other hand lets answer how much Emerald can REDUCE lag by having the AO client side, no scripted timer hitting the sim every 0.1s or how about it's local radar, no laggy 96m sensor running every second.

Please, don't jump on the trendy to bash Emerald bandwagon when you're not familiar and I won't jump on the trendy to promote it as I haven't.

Use the viewer that best suits your needs, simple as that and respect others that wish to do the same.

I believe that this may actually violate the Coding Standards for the OS client project, which mandates "no magic numbers". The "?OTRv2?".. section of that IM is pretty clearly a magic number (or a magic cookie, which is basically the same thing).

But.. of course.. since Emerald have no intent to submit these to become part of the official client, there are absolutely no regulations into what they can inject into SL.

See why I don't like 3rd-party viewers yet?

Emerald stole my thanksgiving turkey and peed in my shoes.

No I was talking about the entire viewer not just that small part of it. I notice severe performance degradation whenever somebody tp's into a sim and I am wondering if a viewer that is sending a gazzilion requests could have an impact.. and don''t get your panties all ruffled up yet.. I won't bash the thing unless I have a reason to.

For an AO to work at all, it has to be "hitting the sim" very very often so that other people can see it. Its radar may be a time improvement over normal radars (I don't know) but Emerald makes up for it by spamming everyone in the sim with multiple hits of the cryo ping message.

Thanks. I also would have let Emerald off the hook on this had I not seen that they strongly recommend OTR without explaining that it breaks chat with non-OTR users.